4. Poems to Seasons 12

    4.1 Nature is Vigorous 12

    4.2 Nature is Lifeless 13

5. Particularity of Dickinson’ s Contradiction 15

    5.1 Living in Seclusion 15

    5.2 Rooted in Puritanism 17

    5.3 Redefining Transcendental View of Nature 18

6. Conclusion 20

Notes 21

References 22

1. Introduction

1.1 Emily Dickinson and Her Poetic Achievements

    Emily Dickinson, considered as important as Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe, is one of the greatest poets in American literature. She has made great contribution to the prosperity and development of the world literature. Janet Gray gives her such high praise by claiming that “no American poet-and no woman poet writing in English-has enjoyed wider circulation, greater popularity or more secure canonicity than Dickinson”(1998:25).Dickinson was born in an upper class family in New England with grumous religious atmosphere and did not get married and lived a reclusive life. She was a productive poet and wrote nearly 1800 pieces of poems, which was very rare in the poetic history of American, even of the world. Emily Dickinson had her own definition of poetry. “If I read a book that makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry” (Letter 342) . Her definition of poetry was unprecedented, sensitive and straight. Within her little lyrics, Dickinson addressed these issues that involved the whole human society, which contained love, religion, immortality, death and nature. Simple as they seemed to be, in fact, the thoughts were profound. These poems were uncommon for its subtlety, variety, and mystification. Additionally, Dickinson’s poetic technique was very unique and it influenced many poets, especially the modernistic poets on the twentieth century, including the imagists Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell and William Carlos Williams. Dickinson, as well as Walt Whitman, was regarded as the leaders of modern poetry. Dickinson’s unconventionality in composition, acute discernment of outward and inward experiences made her poems fly their own colors. 

    Emily Dickinson died in1886 when she was 56, however, at that time she was virtually unknown except for a small circle of acquaintances. As a recluse, her secluded life was regarded as one of the great mysteries; as a poet, her original poems were believed to have helped initiate modern poetry. In The Life of Emily Dickinson, Sewall wrote, “Genius is ultimately uncountable, and none more so than Emily Dickinson’s” (1980:17). Others compared her with Shakespeare in terms of the language skills she used in her poetry. However, before Dickinson’s death, none but seven of her poems had come of the press, even anonymously—one of the greatest poets in American literature had lived and died unknown to the public. She was, so as to be considered as a mystery, a paradox.

1.2 Literature Review

In the 1920s, Emily Dickinson was referred to the critics as one of the greatest American poets. Criticism on her began with Todd and Higginson’s co-effort to publish her first series of poems in 1924, but with a disappointing response that she was accepted by readers more as an elusive figure than as a successful poet. Later her niece Martha Dickinson Mianchi’ published another series of her poems, which lay the ground for later critics’ study. In this period, the central focus of the critical discussion concerned with her poetry was mainly upon her psychic problem, and then with more stress on her non-conformism of God and of religion. Critics made possible guesses at the reason of her seclusion and her decision not to convert herself to God. However, it was not until the publication of The Riddle of Emily Dickinson (1951) written by Rebecca Patterson that the criticism came to a flourish stage. The 1950s and 1960s were the critical epoch of consolidation in Dickinson research. For many critics, for instance, Jay Leyda in The years and Hours of Emily Dickinson(1960), S.P. Rosenbaum’s A Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson(1967), and Jack Capp’s Emily Dickinson’ s reading (1966), regarded her as a founder father of modernism. Dickinson’s fame kept growing during the period dominated by new criticism. Her resemblances with the metaphysical, especially Gorge Herbert and John Donne, have been frequently discussed. Feminist studies of Dickinson’s technique have revealed the creative nature of her poetic talent. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, in the Mad Woman in the Attic(1979) regarded Dickinson’ s refusal of traditional poetry as a refusal of patriarchal poetry. The founding of Emily Dickinson International society in 1988 is the most obvious evidence of Emily Dickinson’s literary significance.