A Comparative Study On The Theme And Writing Style In The Works Of Emily Dickinson And SAN Mao

Emily Dickinson and SAN Mao are considered as outstanding representative women writers inAmerican and Chinese literary history. Dickinson wrote about1,789unique poems for the latergenerations. The themes of her poems concern love, nature, death and eternal life, etc. which isvery rare in the poetic history of America, even of the whole world. She is respected highly bythe western literary circles, and her works are regarded as a milestone in the history of Americanpoetry.SAN Mao was a very popular woman writer in Taiwan, China. In her short life of48years, shewrote14collections of essays,4translations,3audio books, a movie and a record album for theworld. Her writing style is plain but with romantic nature. Her intimate and refreshing proseworks are most popular with readers.Emily Dickinson lived in seclusion but rose to fame after she died in the19thcentury in America,while SAN Mao traveled for thousands of miles in59counties and wrote lots of well-knownworks through her observation in the1980s in Taiwan. In spite of the fact that they lived intotally different countries, historical periods as well as social systems, there are similarities anddifferences between the works of the two writers. This thesis attempts to compare the works ofEmily Dickinson and SAN Mao for a better understanding of the literary works of the twodifferent women writers.Focusing on different themes, this paper employs a comparative approach to the two womenwriters and their representative works, and uses Feminist theory to analyze their works.According to the theme of love, this thesis divides into two parts: comprehension of love; longing for marriage. Then combined with San Mao’s pursuit and emotion to love and the feelingwhen she lost love. For the theme of nature, the two women writers have different attitudes. Butthey share a lot of similarities in their understandings and attitudes towards, and how they handlethe themes of death and immortality.In the second part of this thesis, these two writers’ writing styles are analyzed. Then this paperalso compares the images of the two women writes’ works. Finally, this thesis analyzes the twokinds of causes for their differences and similarities: social and family background, personalexperiences of the two writers and their counter-traditional spirit resulted from their backgroundand experiences, thus different culture are reflected.