Emily Dickinson 英语专业教学课件.pptVIP

Emily Dickinson (1830—1886) life 1.Emily Dickinson was born into one of Amherst, Massachusetts’ most prominent families on 10 December 1830. 2.She was the second child born to Emily Norcross (1804-1882) and Edward Dickinson (1803-1874), a Yale graduate, successful lawyer, Treasurer for Amherst College and a United States Congressman. 3. Emily had an older brother named William Austin Dickinson (1829-1895) (known as Austin) who would marry her most intimate friend Susan Gilbert in 1856. 4.The Dickinsons were strong advocates for education and Emily too benefited from an early education in classic literature, studying the writings of Virgil and Latin, mathematics, history, and botany. 5. Dickinson proved to be a dazzling student and in 1847, though she was already somewhat of a ‘homebody’, at the age of seventeen Emily left for South Hadley, Massachusetts to attend the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. 6. She stayed there less than a year and some of the theories as to why she left are homesickness and poor health. 7. She was in the midst of the college town’s society and bustle although she started to spend more time alone, reading and maintaining lively correspondences with friends and relatives. 8.Emily Dickinson died on 15 May 1886, at the age of fifty-six. She now rests in the West Cemetery of Amherst, Hampshire County, Massachusetts. Not wishing a church service, a gathering was held at the Homestead. Emily Dickinson’s Poetry Emily Dickinson had no abstract theory of poetry. When editor Thomas Higginson asked her to define poetry, she gave a subjective, emotional response: If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever 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. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way? The Characters of Her Verse 1. Highly compressed, compact, shy of being exposed. 2. Her style is elliptical - she will say no more than