Experts and scholars have done some researches on Dickinson’s and Whitman’s poems from different perspectives. Wang Zhuyou elaborated Whitman’s concept of death that death wasn’t the end of life but a the part of life(2). Liu Shoulan stated the reason why Emily Dickinson liked talking about death and the beauty of death reflected in her poems(3). Lin Huiying analyzed the different images of death in Emily’s poems (3). Pi Ying compared Dickinson’s poems with Whitman’s to analyze the different images of death(7). However, these studies are not systematic and deep-going enough. 

The paper attempts to make a comparison on Dickinson’s and Whitman’s concepts of death by studying their poems. It is pided into five chapters. The first chapter is an introduction of the paper. The second chapter introduces Emily Dickinson and her concept of death. The third chapter introduces Walt Whitman and his concept of death. The fourth chapter compares the two poets’ concepts of death. The last chapter is a conclusion of the whole paper. This paper studies Dickinson’s and Whitman’s concepts of death by comparative analysis, so as to make people better understand the two poets’ views on death and their poems.,源Z自L751:文,论/文]网[www.751com.cn

II. Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s Concept of Death

Emily Dickinson(1830-1886) was also called Amherst nun who spent more than half of her life living far away from secularity and wasn’t married all her life. There is nobody like her who can live a life painful but peaceful. She sought pleasure from creating poems. She had created more than 1700 poems in her house with her limited experience and fertile imagination. Her poems are as beautiful as pearls and full of bold imagination, which show a infinite spirit world for us. 

2.1 Brief Introduction to Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was one of the most famous poet in the history of American literature. She played an extremely important role in the development of modern poetry and she was considered as the mother of American poetry. However, Her life was not smooth. As a poet, Dickinson was dying to own the approval of the public and people could enjoy the beauty of her poems, but she had been rejected a lot by presses, so there are only several poems that can be published before her death. As a young girl, she was eager for love, but she loved a man who had married, for which she could not obtain perfect love. As a girl who grew in a family that influenced by Christianity, she had a suspicion about her belief with her growing and hovered between two beliefs, which made her hesitated. Many experiences made Emily choose to stay away from the secularity and live the life like a hermit. Emily had suffered a lot in her life. Her favorite nephew’s early death, the death of the dearest teachers and friends, which made her think a lot about death. There was a cemetery that was not far away from the poet’s house. Emily had saw many sorrow that was caused by death, which made the poet be eager to take about death in her poems, as well as adding a little bit sadness to her poetry.