An Ecofeminist Interpretation Of The Poetry Of Emily Dickinson

As one of the most marvelous American poetesses, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) shared the honor with Walt Whitman in the field of American literature. Despite that fewer than a dozen of her poems had been published during her lifetime and some unfavorable reviews about her poetry appeared in the late19th century and the early20th century, Dickinson's genius for creating poetry was incontrovertible. Her profound thoughts, idiosyncratic writing style, her unique imagery and her innovation all established her high position as an important poetess. Her nearly eighteen hundred poems have been increasingly attracting readers from all over the world. Although people do research on Emily Dickinson's poetry from various perspectives, scholars seldom research on the combination of her ecological awareness and feminist consciousness. This paper is going to employ ecofeminist approach to interpret Dickinson's poetry.As a19th century woman, long before the feminist movement and ecological activism, Dickinson expressed her rebellion to Male Supremacy Culture and showed her ecological awareness in her works. The thesis is attempting to apply ecofeminist approach on Emily Dickinson's works, exploring her challenge of establishing gender roles as well as her claim upon ecology to make a detailed interpretation on her poetry and offer a new perspective to appreciate her poems. To achieve this, the thesis is classified into five chapters.The first Chapter serves as a brief introduction to Emily Dickinson, her works, the literature review as well as the framework of this thesis. Chapter two mainly deals with the theoretic framework of this thesis, which is ecofeminism. Chapter three is a careful study on Emily Dickinson's ecological awareness and feminist consciousness from the perspective of ecofeminist approach. Chapter four is about her feminist tendency in style. The last chapter is the findings and implications of the thesis.