Walt Whitman Emily Dickinson

Walt Whitman Emily Dickinson Leaves of Grass 《草叶集》

Born: 31 May 1819 Birthplace: Long Island, New York Died: 26 March 1892 Best Known As: The poet who wrote Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman

1) born in New York, a common family2) five years education, variety of jobs3) before wrote poems, wrote kinds of other literary productions4) inspired by grandeur landscape of America, wrote lots of poems, thus a famous poet 1. Life

5) major topics--- man & nature 6) themes --- individual freedom; equality; democracy 7) the bard of democracy and humanity 1. Life

Leaves of Grass《草叶集》（totally nine editions and last edition includes more than 400 poems） 2. Leaves of Grass

2. Leaves of Grass • First published in 1855 with only twelve poems, it was greeted by Ralph Waldo Emerson as "the wonderful gift . . . the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed." Over the course of Whitman's life, the book reappeared in many versions, expanded and transformed as the author's experiences and the nation's history changed and grew. Whitman's ambition was to creates something uniquely American. In that he succeeded.

2. Leaves of Grass • His poems have been woven into the very fabric of the American character. From his solemn masterpieces "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" to the joyous freedom of "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric," and "Song of the Open Road," Whitman's work lives on, an inspiration to the poets of later generations.

2. Leaves of Grass • Abraham Lincoln read it with approval, but Emily Dickinson described its bold language and themes as "disgraceful." Ralph Waldo Emerson found it "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet produced." Published at the author's expense on July 4, 1855, Leaves of Grass inaugurated a new voice and style into American letters and gave expression to an optimistic, bombastic vision that took the nation as its subject.

2. Leaves of Grass • 1) He extols the ideals of equality and democracy and celebrates the dignity, the self-reliant spirit and the joy of the common man. • 2) major topics--- man & nature 3) themes--- individual freedom; equality; democracy4) employing “free verse” (a kind of poetry that doesn’t conform to any regular metre and rhyme) as the form of his poems with two characteristics: parallelism and phonetic recurrence

2. Leaves of Grass • * What is the difference between free verse and blank verse? (blank verse has no rhyme, but it should be iambic pentameter)5) frankness of the commonplace and the ugly sides in human life6) direct, plain and even vulgar language7) “untold latencies” (his poetry suggests rather than tells)8) great influence on the 20th century American poets

3. Emerson’s influence upon Whitman • [both Whitman and Dickinson were influenced by transcendentalism] • 1) Emerson laid down poetic rules and Whitman practised them. • 2) oversoul & divine power 3) “The poet, was at a beginning of a great career.” --- by Emerson(upon the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass)

4. Song of Myself • 1) It opens the Leaves of Grass;2) “Song of America” / “Song of the New Nation” 3) portraying various aspects of American life, esp those of ordinary people4) self:--- Self includes and is everything and everyone in the universe. • 5）the joy of the common man • a world of equality and democracy

5. I Sit and Look out • theme: • the failure of democracy and the social and moral corruption in America

6. Important features of Whitman’s poems • 1) repetition2) parallelism3) phrase instead of foot(he replaced the rhyme and five feet with meaning or meaning group)4) juxtaposition5) long lines

Born: 10 December 1830 Birthplace: Amherst, Massachusetts Died: 15 May 1886 Best Known As: The poet called "The Belle of Amherst" Emily Dickinson

1) She was born in a Puritan’s family. Her father was a famous lawyer.2) Dickinson graduated from Amherst Academy in 1847. The following year (the longest time she was ever to spend away from home) she attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary at South Hadley, but because of her fragile health she did not return. 1. Life

3) At the age of 17 she settled into the Dickinson home and turned herself into a competent housekeeper and a more than ordinary observer of Amherst life. She lived a leisure and simple life and kept single all her life. She enjoyed gardening and writing and tried to avoid visitors. 1. Life

Sexuality The sexuality of Emily Dickinson is a topic of dispute. Dickinson's possible romantic and sexual adventures are matters of great controversy among her biographers and critics. 1. Life

There is little evidence on which to base a conclusion about the objects of her affection, though Dickinson's understanding of passion can be inferred through some of her poems and letters. Some biographers have theorized Dickinson may have had romantic attachments to women in her younger years, a hypothesis which has grown in popularity. Many scholars claim that the evidence for her relationship with women is scant and highly ambiguous. 1. Life

4) She wrote 1775 poems, but only seven of them were published in her life time.5) Dickinson died on May 15, 1886. The cause of death was listed as Bright's disease (nephritis肾炎). 1. Life

2. Poetry • 1) Strong influence of Puritanism on her thought (pessimism and tragic tone of her poems)2) Care about death and immortality (1/3 of all her poems talked about these two themes.) Her verses were short but inventive, and her themes universal: love, death, and her relationship with God and nature.3) Exploring human’s inner world (description of psychology in her poems)

2. Poetry • 4) Severe economy of expression5) Original images6) Direct and plain language7) Great influence on the Imagist Movement in the 20th century

3. I heard a Fly buzz ---- when I died • The poetess is watching her own death and recording the process. Instead of seeing God and hearing the songs of angels yearned for by Puritans upon death she heard a fly buzz, which is really ironic. • Fly: sets off the stillness in the room; • blocks off the light (from heaven); • suggests a coming decadence • → the speaker loses the opportunity of gaining immortality after death

3. I heard a Fly buzz ---- when I died • The omnipresent fly in “I Heard a Fly Buzz — When I Died — ” has been a problem for critics since the poem’s publication in 1896. Sharon Cameron, writing in her book Lyric Time: Dickinson and the Limits of Genre, believes that the fly plays an important role in the speaker’s experience of death. According to Cameron, the poem is, in part, about “the conflict between preconception and perception.”

3. I heard a Fly buzz ---- when I died • The person on his or her deathbed shifts perspective from “the ritual of dying” to “the fact of death.” Cameron argues that the fly, by interrupting the dying speaker with its “Blue — uncertain stumbling Buzz — ” obliterates his or her false notions of death. Cameron sees the fly’s “stumbling” as evidence that it, too, is dying, and the speaker’s “experience becomes one with the fly’s.”

3. I heard a Fly buzz ---- when I died • Inder Nath Kher also discusses the symbolism of the fly in his book The Landscape of Absence: Emily Dickinson’s Poetry. Kher believes that the sound of the fly represents “the last conscious link with reality.” Kher points out that the poem lacks any hint of a life after death. The buzz of the fly is described as “Blue,” and Kher, noting that blue is usually Dickinson’s symbol for eternity, suggests that in this poem it becomes “the symbol of complete extinction.”

4. Because I could not stop for Death • Perhaps Dickinson’s most famous work, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” is generally considered to be one of the great masterpieces of American poetry. Written around 1863, the poem was published in Dickinson’s first posthumous collection, Poems by Emily Dickinson, in 1890. It has also been printed under the title “The Chariot.”

4. Because I could not stop for Death • In the poem, a woman tells the story of how she is busily going about her day when a polite gentleman by the name of Death arrives in his carriage to take her out for a ride. Incidentally mentioned, the third passenger in the coach is a silent, mysterious stranger named Immortality. Thus begins one of the most famous examples of personification and figurative language in American literature.

4. Because I could not stop for Death • Death takes the woman on a leisurely, late-afternoon ride to the grave and beyond, passing playing children, wheat fields, and the setting sun — all reminders of the cyclical nature of human life — along the way. The woman describes their journey with the casual ease one might use to recount a typical Sunday drive. They pause a moment at her grave, perhaps Death’s house, which “seemed / A Swelling of the Ground,” and then continue their never-ending ride “toward Eternity.”

4. Because I could not stop for Death • In the end, through a brilliant use of hyperbole, or intentional exaggeration, the woman insists that all the centuries that have since passed have felt “shorter than the Day” that she took that fateful carriage ride which revealed to her for the first time the true meaning of Immortality.

Thank you!

Walt Whitman Emily Dickinson