Emily Dickinson And Metaphysical Poetry

Emily Dickinson is one of the most famous poets in American literary history. During her lifetime, she confined herself to the reclusive life and wrote nearly1800poems, expressing her understanding on death, religion, life and nature. In recent years, many scholars have paid much attention to the extraordinary writing style and different themes. There are scholars who have noticed the succinct wording, the heterogeneous imagery, the subtle logic and dialectical thinking, especially the presence of thoughts, which correspond with the features of the seventeenth-century metaphysical poetry.This thesis is going to analyze the metaphysical poetic style of Dickinson’s poetry from the following three aspects—conceit, paradox and pun. The intention of this thesis is to show that the metaphysical poetic style manifests in Dickinson’ poetry is not an intentional imitation of the seventeenth-century metaphysical poetry, but the result of Dickinson’s active meditation on her life experience and a reflection of the complexity and contradiction of life itself.This thesis consists of five parts.Part One is the introduction. The general background information is mentioned, the theoretical background and a brief literature review are emphasized as well. The outline of the thesis is also included in this part.Chapter One intends to examine the conceits in Dickinson’s poetry. Poems which adopt common domestic images and technical terms or images will be discussed. The most common domestic images such as bread, pincushions and house are linked with a large idea. The technical terms such as botanic terms, political terms, economical terms etc. are the manifestation of Dickinson’s knowledge of the world and her desire to take each aspects of life experience for poetic expression. The intention is to find out that Dickinson’s use of common imagery and the adaption technical terms or images for conceits are not just for the sake of metaphorical originality or to startle her readers. It is the reflection of her nature—an attachment to metaphysical complexity. The conceits are a perfect unity of thought and imagery.Chapter Two is to explore the paradoxes in Dickinson’s poetry. On the one hand, oxymoron bridges the contradictory ideas or emotions both in subjective and objective world, and creates special ideas or emotions to express Dickinson’s profound thinking on religion and life. On the other hand, paradoxes which are surprising deviations from common senses, scientific principles are used by Dickinson to express her perception on the relationship of madness and intelligence, life and death, success and failure. The paradox is employed by Dickinson to demonstrate the contradiction in life experience. The paradox makes the meaning more intense and valued in metaphysical level.Chapter Three focuses on the puns in Dickinson’s poetry. On the one hand, words which are similar in sound but diverse in significance are going to be investigated. On the other hand, the equivoque, another type of pun, is going to be studied. Words with disparate meanings are going to be justified as equally relevant in a context. The essence of pun is conciseness. The puns not only intensify the connotation of poetic language, but also express her deep meditation toward death, life, and love.The conclusion sums up the three poetic techniques in Dickinson’s poetry. Dickinson assuredly recreated the metaphysical technique in her poetry with witty use of the conceits, paradoxes and puns. Those techniques are the perfect unity of sense and thought, which is the essence of metaphysical poetry. Therefore, the metaphysical poetic technique is actually the manifestation of Dickinson’s excellent poetic skills.