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摘要:艾米丽·狄金森是美国著名诗人。她一生以独特的写作风格创作了500多首描写自然的诗,其数量众多,内容丰富,在她的诗作中占有重要地位。在自然诗中,艾米丽·狄金森使用了大量的象征修辞,使之意义深远,形象生动,更俱哲理性。
关键词:艾米丽·狄金森;自然诗;象征
The Use of Symbols in Dickinson's Nature Poems
IIntroduction
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), American poet, is considered one of the greatest poets in American literature. Her unique, gemlike lyrics are distillations of profound feeling and original intellect that stand outside the mainstream of 19th-century American literature. Dickinson wrote 1775 poems. They give a complete description of her meditation about nature, life and the universe.
IIAnalysis of the use of symbols in her nature poems
AHer nature poems
Of her many poems, what I want to give special scrutiny is her nature poems. Nature appears widely and frequently in her work. Nature, for her, is usually bright and dark mystery, only occasionally illuminated by flashes of pantheism and sometimes darkened by hopeless fatality. We can find her treatment of nature in all her subjects. She read a lot of poems of Romantic poets and it made her look for meaning, symbol, imagery and spiritual refreshment in nature. The New England countryside of her time was still largely untrammeled, and she was fascinated by its changing seasons and their connection with her own inner moods. Although her direct observations were confined to meadows, forests, hills, flowers, and a quite small range of creatures, these just provided symbols that quite suitable to her own feeling and conflicts in her deep heart and mind. Dickinson sees nature as benevolent but cruel and perhaps destructive.
BThe use of symbols in her nature poems
Symbols used by Dickinson seem to make her nature poems ambiguous and difficult to understand, but in deeper, livelier, more vivid and more philosophical.
Symbol is anything that stands for or represents something else beyond it. Objects like flags and crosses, natural scenes like landscape and sunset clouds and animals like snake and bird in Emily Dickinson's nature poems can all function symbolically; and words are also symbols. In literary usage, however, a symbol is a specially evocative kind of image: that is, a word or phrase referring to a concrete object, scene, or action which also has some further significance associated with it: flowers, mountains, birds, and voyages have all been used as common symbols. And many of them are skillfully used in Dickinson's poems. For instance, in "IT SIEFS FROM LEADEN SIEVES", snow is used as a symbol of both death and impermanence, in "A NARROW FELLOW IN THE GRASS", the snake is the symbol of evil and in "A BIRD CAME DOWN THE WALK", the bird is a symbol of nature, or in my opinion, the symbol of freedom.
IIIConclusion
Now I have already given a crude description and analysis about the use of symbols in Dickinson's nature poems. The use of symbols as well as the symbolism implied in the symbols brings life to Dickinson's nature poems, which helps the readers' imagination fly freely in the world of poetry created by her, and gives more meanings to her nature poems, which requires the readers to pay more attention to and meditate for a long time on her poems in order to fully understand them. Many experts say her great talent is one of the reasons that make her a famous poet. And I will say her skillful use of symbol is also an important factor that makes her rank as one of the greatest poets in American literature or even the world's literature.
Bibliography
1.Mordecai Marcus. Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems, C.K. Hillegass, 1982.
2.Ed. Li Yuansan. Twenty Poems by Emily Dickinson, World Today Press, Hong Kong, 1977.
3.常耀信,《美国文学简史》,南开大学出版社,1990。
4.杨岂深,龙文佩,《美国文学选读》第一册,上海译文出版社,1985。
作者简介:赵巍巍(1982.2-),女,哈尔滨师范大学在读硕士研究生,英语语言文学研究方向
关键词:艾米丽·狄金森;自然诗;象征
The Use of Symbols in Dickinson's Nature Poems
IIntroduction
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), American poet, is considered one of the greatest poets in American literature. Her unique, gemlike lyrics are distillations of profound feeling and original intellect that stand outside the mainstream of 19th-century American literature. Dickinson wrote 1775 poems. They give a complete description of her meditation about nature, life and the universe.
IIAnalysis of the use of symbols in her nature poems
AHer nature poems
Of her many poems, what I want to give special scrutiny is her nature poems. Nature appears widely and frequently in her work. Nature, for her, is usually bright and dark mystery, only occasionally illuminated by flashes of pantheism and sometimes darkened by hopeless fatality. We can find her treatment of nature in all her subjects. She read a lot of poems of Romantic poets and it made her look for meaning, symbol, imagery and spiritual refreshment in nature. The New England countryside of her time was still largely untrammeled, and she was fascinated by its changing seasons and their connection with her own inner moods. Although her direct observations were confined to meadows, forests, hills, flowers, and a quite small range of creatures, these just provided symbols that quite suitable to her own feeling and conflicts in her deep heart and mind. Dickinson sees nature as benevolent but cruel and perhaps destructive.
BThe use of symbols in her nature poems
Symbols used by Dickinson seem to make her nature poems ambiguous and difficult to understand, but in deeper, livelier, more vivid and more philosophical.
Symbol is anything that stands for or represents something else beyond it. Objects like flags and crosses, natural scenes like landscape and sunset clouds and animals like snake and bird in Emily Dickinson's nature poems can all function symbolically; and words are also symbols. In literary usage, however, a symbol is a specially evocative kind of image: that is, a word or phrase referring to a concrete object, scene, or action which also has some further significance associated with it: flowers, mountains, birds, and voyages have all been used as common symbols. And many of them are skillfully used in Dickinson's poems. For instance, in "IT SIEFS FROM LEADEN SIEVES", snow is used as a symbol of both death and impermanence, in "A NARROW FELLOW IN THE GRASS", the snake is the symbol of evil and in "A BIRD CAME DOWN THE WALK", the bird is a symbol of nature, or in my opinion, the symbol of freedom.
IIIConclusion
Now I have already given a crude description and analysis about the use of symbols in Dickinson's nature poems. The use of symbols as well as the symbolism implied in the symbols brings life to Dickinson's nature poems, which helps the readers' imagination fly freely in the world of poetry created by her, and gives more meanings to her nature poems, which requires the readers to pay more attention to and meditate for a long time on her poems in order to fully understand them. Many experts say her great talent is one of the reasons that make her a famous poet. And I will say her skillful use of symbol is also an important factor that makes her rank as one of the greatest poets in American literature or even the world's literature.
Bibliography
1.Mordecai Marcus. Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems, C.K. Hillegass, 1982.
2.Ed. Li Yuansan. Twenty Poems by Emily Dickinson, World Today Press, Hong Kong, 1977.
3.常耀信,《美国文学简史》,南开大学出版社,1990。
4.杨岂深,龙文佩,《美国文学选读》第一册,上海译文出版社,1985。
作者简介:赵巍巍(1982.2-),女,哈尔滨师范大学在读硕士研究生,英语语言文学研究方向