Emily Dickinson Her poems and her life

Why bother to introduce Emily Dickinson to you? You Me She is one of the greatest American female poets in the late 19 th century.

The literary thinking in 19 th century America Romanticism: rebel the neoclassicism The American romanticism American-lize / Taiwanese-lize: American style, Taiwanese style American self, Taiwanese self

rebel Truth and beauty are identified with a procedure of constant metamorphosis ….. …. Whitman The only way to acknowledge your participation in (American) culture is to behave as a supreme individual, to rebel the past. ……… Whitman Make it new ! ……….Ezra Pound

Anti-tradition The familiar theme and story will be lost to the American poets.

self Poetry is as a drama of self Epistemology: the process of the interaction between Perception and communication. Be experimental, be solitude, eccentric, innovative, and most important of all be an unique individual.

So she describes pleasure, melancholy, despair. To her, the eruption of pain is an apocalyptic event and exultation seems to irradiate (light up) all existence. She is aware her world is no way coexistence with reality, this shadows all her work, but it comes with particular force in those poems about one experience that makes a definite conclusion to her poems.

Dickinson ’ s self For her, self is not so much a circumscribed Eden as a prison-house form which it seems impossible to escape Her world is her feeling, her self.

Nature is a stranger yet. The one that cite her most have never passed her haunted house …. To pity those that know her not is helped by the regret. That those who know her, know her less, the nearer her they get.

Free Verse A perfect medium for American poetry It has a dynamic and provisional quality It runs poems into open field, a area of vital possibility where reader can allow his imagination to play It seems to ask his reader to resolve doubts about such things as pace, rhythm, intonation, and in the process rewrite the poem in his own terms..

America ’ s poet: Robert Frost

The road not taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth. Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Dickinson ’ s poems Emily Dickinson - Success is counted sweetest (67) Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host Who took the Flag today Can tell the definition So clear of Victory As he defeated -- dying – On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Burst agonized and clear! Agonize:feel sorrow, painful

Emily Dickinson ’ s words illustrate a highly disruptive use of traditional matters, and that produce a feeling of surprise, a series of stimulating discords out of which each one of us must evolve our own harmonies. evolve: develop, make progress

Disruptive use of rhythm Arbitrariness, dislocated, disjunctive nature

The form of poetry Stanza ( 詩節 ): paragraph Rhyme ( 押韻 ) Rhythm ( 節奏 ) The meaning of poetry:

The meaning of poetry Tone ( 語調 ): irony ( 反諷 ) overstatement ( 誇大 ) understatement ( 低估 ) (see text book p. 158) Word order ( 字序 ) Imagery ( 意像 ) Figures of speech ( 言談風格 ) Symbol ( 象徵 ): rose-love, cross-Jesus Theme ( 主旨 )

Dickinson ’ s life