An Aesthetic Analysis Of Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

Emily Dickinson was a great woman poet of America, whose works anticipated the transition of western poetry from tradition to modernity, therefore the study of Dickinson’s poetry has an important significance in many respects from literary history to the study of culture and society. This thesis tries to comprehensively analyze Dickinson’s poetry from the perspective of aesthetics.The introduction summarizes the history of Dickinson scholarship in America as well as in China, pointing out that the strength of the study in the US lies in its theoretical originality, profound analysis and mastery of relevant data. And their close reading of texts is well-grounded both inside the discourse and concerning its context as well. The study in China, influenced by Chinese tradition of poetic criticism, does not think much of theoretical coherence but tries to retain and interpret the poems’ impression on common readers. However, on the one hand, theory, data and the formalist close reading do not amount to true experience with a poem; on the other hand, criticism based only on personal impression often turns out to be superficial. Therefore the necessity of an aesthetic study is revealed, for it seems the most likely way of combining the merits of the above two approaches.Chapter1discusses the aesthetic subject of Dickinson’s poetry. Firstly, Dickinson’s poetic self is derived from the transcendentalist theory for its source, and the aesthetic quality of such a subject is affirmed. Then the three identities of Dickinson’s poetic self are uncovered as woman, child and the soul of nature.Chapter2treats the aesthetic objects of Dickinson’s poetry. The units of analysis can be identified as images. All those images are put into different "realms," which are determined by the spiritual relationships the subject is put in.The main body of this chapter discusses how those images are shaped and working in their realms of nature, life and mind to make special aesthetic worth quite different from traditional poetry and her contemporaries.Chapter3analyzes the interaction between aesthetic subjects and objects methodologically. It in general describes such an interaction as a two-folded communication. This chapter attempts to analyze three crucial pairs of opposites in this process:inspection and pervasion, affirmation and irony, rebellion and integration. Such an investigation offers a further understanding of Dickinson’s poetic approaches as well as of how the world embodied in her poetry can be regarded as an aesthetic world.It is concluded that the core of Dickinson’s poetry is not only a display of beautiful things and sentiments, but also of an aesthetic activity. Many seemingly elusive characteristics of her poetry can be treated more rationally from such a perspective. Dickinson’s poems seem short and simple, but what characterizes her originality is her talent in making use of leakages, difference and conflicts, which other poets also come across but will try to dissolve into unity. Dickinson prefers tension and fragments, anticipating post-modernists, but her transcendental1st view also makes an implicit band of aesthetic unity, admitting a traditional reading. Dickinson’s poetry will enjoy an even higher position in future evolution of literature.