Although her time was in a flood of romantic movement, she distinguished herself in a unique way. Her poems are original and express her feelings toward her own experience. Her creation of poems is irregular, with the abundant use of dashes and capitalization. In her poems she deals with the topic on love, nature, friendship, death and immorality, which seems to have created her own style of expression. In total Emily Dickinson created 1775 short poems, which not only moved the 20th century readers but exerted a great impact upon the so-called “new poetry” of the early 20th century.
1.3 Influences Exerted by Social and Family Background
As for Li Qingzhao, the Song Dynasty(960-1279) was boomed in economy and culture. People at that time were encouraged to compose Ci poems. Although women were not encouraged to step into the literary world, Li Qingzhao outstand-ed herself in the Chinese classic literature.In 1127 when she was 44, the Jin invaders captured the emperor, which became a turning point in her entire life. This event led her to a turbulent life, which undoubtedly changed her style in poems. At that period, she lived in grief for homesick, thus she turned this kind of feeling into a series of patriotic poems. It is a pity that only a small part of those works were preserved.
During Emily Dickinson’s life, some important events took place, such as Great Revival—renewing religious fervor among the citizens of New England. Her father was an active supporter of this movement, but she regarded it skeptically. To the opposite, she did not care much about the public but enjoyed her quiet inner world. The Civil War also touched Emily Dickinson’s life to some extent. Due to the Civil War, America was established as an entire nation. However, the bloody wars filled her with intense emotions, which were fully expressed in her poems. Transcendentalism, as a philosophical and literary movement, flourished in New England from 1830s to the Civil war. It influenced her a lot as it stressed the importance of inpidualism, which formed her style of sticking to her own language, images and characteristics.
For Li Qingzhao, although she was born in a period when people all followed the social practice, “The woman obeys the man: in her youth she follows her father and elder brother; when married，she follows her husband; when her husband is dead, she follows her son.” Luckily, Li Qingzhao lived in a well-to-do well-educated family so that she could continue her love for composing poems. At the year of 18, she married the man she loved, Zhao Mingcheng, instead of being forced by the family under the marriage arrangement, which was considered to be the common practice in that time. However, in her forties or so, she suffered a lot from her husband's death and her departure from her hometown. In such declining years, she wrote poems which were replaced with memories of her diseased husband and of her beloved northern homeland. In all, she uses her poems to express her melancholy , joys and griefs. 从李清照和艾米莉•狄金森的意象诗歌看不同的爱情观(3):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_6498.html