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Guizhou Radio＆TV University
Practical Project Design
Title: Emily Dickinson’s Refusal to Publish Her Poems
狄金森拒绝出版她的诗歌的原因
Name: WangJin
Number:
School: Guizhou Radio＆TV University
Major: English (Education Oriented)
Date: March 25th,
Tel:
E-mail：
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The completion of this thesis would not have been possible without the encouragement, the guidance, and the support of many other people. First of all, I would extend my sincere and heartfelt thanks to my supervisor Professor Xia Shangli, who has given me valuable suggestions and insightful comments in the thesis writing. She has also spent much time going through brainstorming with me, put my work on the right track, read in great details every draft of every section of this thesis, and helped improve the appropriateness of English used. My gratitude to Professor Xia knows no bound.
Special thanks also go to my family for their unfailing support and love throughout my university study.
CONTENTS
Abstract in English…...............……………………………………………………....1
Abstract in Chinese………………………………………………………………..…1
I. Introduction………..…………...…………..……………………….….…………1
II. Emily Dickinson’s personality……………………………………………………2
2.1 Introverted………………………………………………………………………..2
2.2 High-hearted……………………………………………………… …………….4
III. Purpose of Emily Dickinson’s writing……………………. …………………….5
IV. The character of Emily Dickinson’s poetry…………….…………………………6
4.1 The using of omission……………………………………………………………6
4.2 The using of dash…………………………………………………………………7
V. The publication history of Emily Dickinson’s poetry……………………………9
VI. Conclusion……………………………………………………………….….... 10
BIBIOGRAPHY..…………………………….………………………………….…...11
DECLARATION…………………………………………………………………12
Emily Dickinson’s Refusal to Publish Her Poems
Abstract: Dickinson is a famous American poetess. She is a literary genius. She wrote a lot of poetry during her lifetime but published very little of her poems. From the information available, It can be seen that she was introverted and a little arrogant, high-hearted; she was not good at dealing with people, and she had no interest on social life; her poetry does not follow grammar rules，so it was hard for the editors and readers to read. These are the reasons why her poems were not published during her lifetime. In this paper, the writer is going to explore the reasons why she refused to publish her poems by studying her personality, the character of her poetry, and the publication history of her poetry.
Key words：Dickinson; personality; refused to publish
摘要：狄金森是美国知名的女诗人，她是个文学天才，不过她生前写了诸多诗歌却极少刊登她的诗歌。从既有的资料看出，她性格内向而又有些高傲，不善于社交也无心处理世事，她的诗歌不重视语法规则是当初的读者乃是编辑极难读懂，这些是她的诗歌在她的生前一直得不到出版的原因。本文要通过对她的个性、诗歌的特点及诗歌出版的历史的研究来探讨她不出版诗歌的原因。
核心词：狄金森； 个性；拒绝出版
I. Introduction
Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, the oldest daughter of Edward Dickinson, a successful lawyer, member of Congress, and for many years treasurer of Amherst College, and of Emily Norcross Dickinson, a timid woman. Dickinson was fun-loving as a child, very smart, and enjoyed the company of others. Her brother, Austin, became a lawyer like his father and was also treasurer of Amherst College. The youngest child of the family, Lavinia, became the chief housekeeper and, like her sister Emily, remained at home all her life and never married. The sixth member of this tightly knit group was Susan Gilbert, Emily's ambitious and witty schoolmate who married Austin in 1856 and who moved into the house next door to the Dickinsons. Emily Dickinson’s family had a conservative tradition. She had receipted orthodox religious education since her childhood. When she was a youth, her life was monotonous and calm and she rarely go out. She started writing at age 20, and most of the early poems have been lost. She kept herself indoor since 1858. Researchers still can not understand the reasons for her long-term seclusion. She didn’t publish her works during her lifetime. After her death, her friends and her younger sister published her works, and she became as famous as Whitman for her well-loved works.
She left 1775 poems. She had accessed to Emerson's thought when she was young. Emerson opposed to authority, advocated the view of intuitive. Most of her poems write about arrogant loneliness, disappointment with the pursuit of religion, and serene death. This reflects her complex psychological status. Her poems focus on content, rather than focus on the rules of grammar. She used a lot of various punctuation marks, especially dash. Emily Dickinson died on May 15, 1886. Her sister and friends selected and edited her poems. Then they published 3 sets in the late 19th century.
During her reclusive life in her own house, she wrote a lot of poems and correspondences that contain great literary value. But she published few of them. Why she wrote many but published few has become a common topic to the people, and this is also the topic purpose of this thesis. As a famous writer, she and her works have been studied by a lot of people, such as Ferlazzo Paul J, as well as Chinese scholars Jiangfeng and Liu Shoulan. Basing on previous studies, this thesis is going to specifically discus the reasons why she did not publish her poems.
II. Emily Dickinson’s personality
2.1 Introverted
Emily was introverted, and she disliked dealing with people. So she didn’t want to show her talent.
Her father Edward was indeed harsh and arbitrary. At the memory of Emily, her father immersed in legal matters all day, simply didn’t care about her much. Since she was a little child, she had a sense of awe toward her father. She thought that her father looked like Cromwell or Ancient Rome’s General. Before the age of 20, her father had always been the backbone of her life, and the major influence that formed her personality.
With the growth of age, Emily began to feel dissatisfied toward her father's strictness. And the sense of worship toward her father had gradually replaced by the feelings of contradiction. On the one hand, her father had an unwavering love to Austin, but didn’t spare a glance on her own intellectual superiority. It made her sad and emerge the feelings of resistance; On the other hand, the irresistible authority of father’s status in the family and charisma remained functioning as an absolute dominant role in her life, and they were her spiritual support for survival. In order to maintain harmony at home and relative independence, she has been silent to deal with the various contradictions in life. In order to be her father’s obedient daughter, Emily seldom left Amherst, and she was also rare to drop a friend's house. That was why she was so introverted.
June 16, 1874, while Edwards was speaking at the conference of Massachusetts’s legislative bodies, he fell to the ground suddenly because of a heart attack. He supported to walk to the hotel, and died two hours later. Her father's death made her grief and loss, and it made her became more introverted. She thought that her home was no longer a home since her father's death.
During the last 20 years of her life, Emily often communicated with Bowles, one of her best friends, by correspondence. Interestingly, when Bowles visited the Dickinsons, he couldn’t see Emily, but received her letter the next day.
In Emily’s last few years, Mabel often went to play the piano in Emily’s home. When Mabel was playing the piano in the room, Dickinson always set quietly on the stairs, not allowing people to see. When Mabel finished playing, Emily would send some cake, wine and poetry to Mabel to show gratitude.
As introverted as she was, sometime she even didn’t want to see her close friends, how could a woman like this would publish her poetry to the world?
2.2 High-hearted
In 1847 autumn, at the age of seventeen Emily left for South Hadley, Massachusetts to attend the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. This school's school objective was to train the opposite sex companions for pastors who go abroad to do their missionary work. That year, in the early morning prays of Christmas day's preceding day, the school Principal Lyon announced that all the students and teachers must have a fasting in Christmas day. The girls were not allowed to leave the bedrooms, but to pray and think of faults quietly. However, Emily and her roommates refused to do like that. The Principal was startled by this action that disregarded authority. She punished the students, who refused to follow her announce, to stand in front of the schoolteachers and other students. Finally, Emily, who looked delicate, stood in the public with no fear.
Judge Ottis Phillips Lord was not only her father's good friend, but also her close friend. After her father’s death, in Emily’s 40s, their friendship even developed into love. Dickinson was intense to enjoy the true love, and she told it to Lord, hoping that she could become Emily Lord. However, when Lord understood and accepted this love, and proposed to marry her, Emily refused decidedly. She said that rejection could bestow her to happiness, and the word no is the most frantic word in our language. From her words, we can see how arrogance she was. Although her dry mind needed love to moisten, and although she was willing to be his captive, she was actually not willing to enable her desire to be obtained easily. But she only hoped to take the man she loved as her father. Perhaps, she just wanted to live in the fantasy, to immerse in her spirit world.
From the tow stories above, we can see that Emily Dickinson was a high-hearted woman. She was arrogant. She wanted to aloof from worldly affairs.
III. Purpose of Emily Dickinson’s writing
Different people have different purposes of writing. Some people write to disclose the social contradiction, some people write to earn money, but Emily Dickinson just wanted to write down her thought.
Lu Xun, a famous Chinese writer, studied on Medicine at first. But in order to wake up Chinese people, he gave up his studying on Medicine, and began to write. He wrote many articles to disclose all kinds of ugly social phenomena. In order to achieve the purpose of his writing, he must publish his articles.
Dickinson’s living environment did not have much serious contradiction. Although she was dissatisfied with the shackles of religion, after all she was impacted by the thought of Puritan. She was opposed to the male authority, but she wasn’t hostile to men. She had no desire to conquer men, but she just would like to surmount the obstacles that restrict her action. Although she had been dissatisfied with his father's harsh, she respected her father very much.
Another well-known Chinese writer Han Han, he can earn a lot of money from writing books. It is said that the money he get from a book he wrote could buy a sports car. He is a youth with open personality. He enjoys playing, and he likes sports car. In order to improve the quality of his life, he has to write and publish books to make money. Compared with him, Dickinson was introverted. She was born in a rich family, so she wasn’t lack of money. In addition, her introverted personalities made her do not want to let the public know her thought.
Dickinson’s writing purpose was to vent her personal feelings. A girl’s delicate inner world would not be opened, because it was secret. Her family was rich, and she had a younger sister, who never married during her life, to take goof care of the whole family. Under the condition of no stress, she could explore the life and death, as well as spiritual significance.
Her writing purpose determined that there was no need for her to publish her poems.
IV. The character of Emily Dickinson’s poetry
4.1 The using of omission
Omission was the rhetorical device that Dickinson used to use. Because of the omitted phenomenon that runs counter to traditional norms of grammar always occurred, her poetry has also become more difficult to understand. No wonder that many of her contemporaries, both readers and critics, thought that her language was very bad. Even if when her close friend Higginson decided to publish her poetry, he still thought firmly that even though her ideas could conquer the readers, but the defect in grammar standard is actually obvious. Perhaps, precisely because of these weird language features, her poetry was confusion for a long time for the publishing industry.
Let us taste these features by reading her poetry.
Four Trees -- upon a solitary Acre --
Without Design
Or Order, or Apparent Action --
Maintain --
The Sun -- upon a Morning meets them --
The Wind --
No nearer Neighbor -- have they --
But God --
The Acre gives them -- Place --
They -- Him -- Attention of Passer by --
Of Shadow, or of Squirrel, haply --
Or Boy --
What Deed is Theirs unto the General Nature --
What Plan
They severally -- retard -- or further --
Unknown –
(, Christine)
The poem shows a fragmented scene. On the screen there are the trees, land, squirrels, children and the shadow. This scenario reminds us something described in her another poem. She described the "long shadow" and "That Darkness". (poem No.764) On the screen, it seems that all are deeply in a flash, even if the sun and wind are just a brief appearance. The only thing that stays with them for long-term is the "closer" neighbor "God". However, even the almighty God can not understand why these things are not linked, or put them into one organic entity, because he can not know their "plan" and "action".
From the syntactic level, it is obviously that this poem does not follow the traditional rules of grammar. For instance, in the first section, the contact verb “remain” which shows no dynamic doesn’t appear until the fourth line. The main sentence (What Deed is Theirs unto the General Nature -) of the final section also has only one contact verb “is”. “Retard”, the only transitive verb of the poem, appears in the clause "What Plan / They severally - retard - or further -". It makes the meaning very confusing. However, such a screen that lacks of dynamic is filled with a large number of nouns. The “Four Trees” have no “Design " and "order" to grow in the solitary "land". Perhaps, this is a true portrayal of unconscious nature in the mind of the poet. Clearly, the poet does not want to show the disorder of nature directly, but insinuate the chaos of nature and human society through the use of a lot of irregular omission.
4.2 The using of dash
In the drafts that wrote on the draft paper, fragments of paper and margins of envelopes, there are a variety of lines with different length and gradient, in addition to common comma, full stop, question mark and exclamation point. The editors have treated all the lines as dashes. Amount these strange symbols, dash is the most frequent one. These var
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