Abstract:Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath are two great female poets in American history. The works of the former is influenced by transcendentalism while the latter is one of the representative figures of the American confessional poets. Both of them write to penetrate into their inner world and to find the treasure of thoughts beyond common people’s imagination. Their poems featuring the theme of death present their special thoughts on the final destination of life. Despite the dramatic difference of their life experience, these two poets express similar fascination about death. Emily Dickinson died of physical disease at the age of 55, while Sylvia Plath committed suicide at 31. Why they chose to die in such a completely different way? With this doubt, this paper attempts to find out the cause of their different opinions on death through the analysis of their death poems. First, this paper gives a brief introduction about their life experience and death poems. Then an elaborate analysis is conducted on their typical death poems at the content level so as to explore their attitudes toward death. Finally, based on the analysis, I come to a conclusion and explain the reason one chose suicide while the other didn’t. Through this study, I find that Emily Dickinson is very courious about death. She is the outlier of death so she just explores and resists death. However, Sylvia Plath thinks death as aspiration and purification of our human beings. No wonder she committed suiside at last. Their different ideas led them to their different results.
Keywords : Emily Dickinson; Sylvia Plath; inner world; death poems
摘要:艾米莉•狄金森和西尔维亚·普拉斯都是美国著名女诗人，前者受爱默生所提倡的超验主义的影响，后者则是自白派的代表人物，她们都深入自己的内心世界，发掘出了常人无法企及的思想。这些特别的思想尤见于她们以死亡为主题的诗歌，虽然生活经历大相径庭，但她们都在诗中表达着对死亡相似的迷恋。艾米莉•狄金森于五十五岁寿终正寝，而西尔维亚•普拉斯却于三十一岁自杀身亡。为什么两者对死亡的选择如此大相径庭呢？带着这个疑问，本文通过深入研究艾米莉•狄金森和西尔维亚•普拉斯的死亡诗，对两者的思想以及内心世界进行探讨。首先，本文对两者的生平经历以及死亡诗进行简单的介绍，呈现两者生活经历的鲜明对照。然后，主要从内容层面上对她们代表性的死亡诗进一步进行比较和详细分析，从中寻找两者对于死亡的不同的看法和态度。最后，基于上述分析对两者的死亡观进行比较并进行总结，从而得出两者最终结局差异的深刻原因。通过此次研究本研究者发现艾米莉•狄金森对死亡持着一种好奇探索的态度，她是死亡的旁观者。而西尔维亚•普拉斯则认为死亡是对自身的净化，她对其充满了无限的神往。正是两者这不同的思想导致了她们不同的结局。
关键词：艾米莉•狄金森；西尔维亚•普拉斯；内心世界；死亡诗
