Emily Dickinson.docx

1、Emily DickinsonEmily DickinsonFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, searchFrom the daguerreotype taken at Mount Holyoke, December 1846 or early 1847. The only authenticated portrait of Emily Dickinson later than childhood, the original is held by the Archives and Special Collecti

2、ons at Amherst College.1Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in h

3、er youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her familys house in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her fr

4、iendships were therefore carried out by correspondence.Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime.2 The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to f

5、it the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinsons poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.3 Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality,

6、 two recurring topics in letters to her friends.Although most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinsons writing, it was not until after her death in 1886when Lavinia, Emilys younger sister, discovered her cache of poemsthat the breadth of Dickinsons work became apparent. Her first colle

7、ction of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both of whom heavily edited the content. A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was publis

8、hed by scholar Thomas H. Johnson. Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess during the late 19th and early 20th century, critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet.4Contentshide 1 Life o 1.1 Family and early childhood o 1.2 Teenage years o 1.3 Early influence

9、s and writing o 1.4 Adulthood and seclusion o 1.5 Is my Verse . alive? o 1.6 The woman in white o 1.7 Posies and poesies o 1.8 Later life o 1.9 Decline and death 2 Publication o 2.1 Contemporary o 2.2 Posthumous 3 Poetry o 3.1 Structure and syntax o 3.2 Major themes o 3.3 Reception o 3.4 Legacy 4 Re

10、ferences o 4.1 Notes o 4.2 Editions of poetry o 4.3 Secondary sources 5 External links LifeFamily and early childhoodA drawing of the young Emily Dickinson, age nine. It was made from a portrait featuring Emily, Austin and Lavinia as children.Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born at the familys homeste

11、ad in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830, into a prominent, but not opulent, family.5 Two hundred years earlier, the Dickinsons had arrived in the New Worldin the Puritan Great Migrationwhere they prospered.6 Emily Dickinsons paternal grandfather, Samuel Dickinson, had almost single-handed

12、ly founded Amherst College.7 In 1813 he built the homestead, a large mansion on the towns Main Street, that became the focus of Dickinson family life for the better part of a century.8 Samuel Dickinsons eldest son, Edward, was treasurer of Amherst College for nearly forty years, served numerous term

13、s as a State Legislator, and represented the Hampshire district in the United States Congress. On May 6, 1828, he married Emily Norcross from Monson. They had three children: William Austin (18291895), known as Austin, Aust or Awe; Emily Elizabeth; and Lavinia Norcross (18331899), known as Lavinia o

14、r Vinnie.9 By all accounts, young Emily was a well-behaved girl. On an extended visit to Monson when she was two, Emilys Aunt Lavinia described Emily as perfectly well & contentedShe is a very good child & but little trouble.10 Emilys aunt also noted the girls affinity for music and her particular t

15、alent for the piano, which she called the moosic.11Dickinson attended primary school in a two-story building on Pleasant Street.12 Her education was ambitiously classical for a Victorian girl.13 Her father wanted his children well-educated and he followed their progress even while away on business.

16、When Emily was seven, he wrote home, reminding his children to keep school, and learn, so as to tell me, when I come home, how many new things you have learned.14 While Emily consistently described her father in a warm manner, her correspondence suggests that her mother was regularly cold and aloof.

17、 In a letter to a confidante, Emily wrote she always ran Home to Awe Austin when a child, if anything befell me. He was an awful Mother, but I liked him better than none.15On September 7, 1840, Dickinson and her sister Lavinia started together at Amherst Academy, a former boys school that had opened

18、 to female students just two years earlier.12 At about the same time, her father purchased a house on North Pleasant Street.16 Emilys brother Austin later described this large new home as the mansion over which he and Emily presided as lord and lady while their parents were absent.17 The house overl

19、ooked Amhersts burial ground, described by one local minister as treeless and forbidding.16Teenage yearsThey shut me up in Prose As when a little GirlThey put me in the Closet Because they liked me still Still! Could themself have peeped And seen my Brain go round They might as wise have lodged a Bi

20、rdFor Treason in the Pound Emily Dickinson, c. 186218Dickinson spent seven years at the Academy, taking classes in English and classical literature, Latin, botany, geology, history, mental philosophy, and arithmetic.19 She had a few terms off due to illness: the longest absence was in 18451846, when

21、 she was only enrolled for eleven weeks.20Dickinson was troubled from a young age by the deepening menace of death, especially the deaths of those who were close to her. When Sophia Holland, her second cousin and a close friend, grew ill from typhus and died in April, 1844, Emily was traumatized.21

22、Recalling the incident two years later, Emily wrote that it seemed to me I should die too if I could not be permitted to watch over her or even look at her face.22 She became so melancholic that her parents sent her to stay with family in Boston to recover.23 With her health and spirits restored, sh

23、e soon returned to Amherst Academy to continue her studies.24 During this period, she first met people who were to become lifelong friends and correspondents, such as Abiah Root, Abby Wood, Jane Humphrey, and Susan Huntington Gilbert (who later married Emilys brother Austin).In 1845, a religious rev

24、ival took place in Amherst, resulting in 46 confessions of faith among Dickinsons peers.25 Dickinson wrote to a friend the following year: I never enjoyed such perfect peace and happiness as the short time in which I felt I had found my savior.26 She went on to say that it was her greatest pleasure

25、to commune alone with the great God & to feel that he would listen to my prayers.26 The experience did not last: Dickinson never made a formal declaration of faith and attended services regularly for only a few years.27 After her church-going ended, about 1852, she wrote a poem opening: Some keep th

26、e Sabbath going to Church / I keep it, staying at Home.28During the last year of her stay at the Academy, Emily became friendly with Leonard Humphrey, its popular new young principal. After finishing her final term at the Academy on August 10, 1847, Dickinson began attending Mary Lyons Mount Holyoke

27、 Female Seminary (which later became Mount Holyoke College) in South Hadley, about ten miles (16km) from Amherst.29 She was at the seminary for only ten months. Although she liked the girls at Holyoke, Dickinson made no lasting friendships there.30 The explanations for her brief stay at Holyoke diff

28、er considerably: either she was in poor health, her father wanted to have her at home, she rebelled against the evangelical fervor present at the school, she disliked the discipline-minded teachers, or she was simply homesick.31 Whatever the specific reason for leaving Holyoke, her brother Austin ap

29、peared on March 25, 1848, to bring her home at all events.32 Back in Amherst, Dickinson occupied her time with household activities.33 She took up baking for the family and enjoyed attending local events and activities in the budding college town.34Early influences and writingWhen she was eighteen,

30、Dickinsons family befriended a young attorney by the name of Benjamin Franklin Newton. According to a letter written by Dickinson after Newtons death, he had been with my Father two years, before going to Worcester in pursuing his studies, and was much in our family.35 Although their relationship wa

31、s probably not romantic, Newton was a formative influence and would become the second in a series of older men (after Humphrey) that Dickinson referred to, variously, as her tutor, preceptor or master.36Newton likely introduced her to the writings of William Wordsworth, and his gift to her of Ralph

32、Waldo Emersons first book of collected poems had a liberating effect. She wrote later that he, whose name my Fathers Law Student taught me, has touched the secret Spring.37 Newton held her in high regard, believing in and recognizing her as a poet. When he was dying of tuberculosis, he wrote to her, saying that he would like to live until she achieved the greatness he foresaw.37 Bio