On Emily Dickinson’s Ecological View from the Perspective of New Materialism

Abstract

The new materialism holds that every substance can act agency. From the perspective of the new materialism, this paper re-discusses the expression of nature in Dickinson’s poetry to understand her environmental ethics. In Dickinson’s poetry, many “stories” arise from the internal “dynamics” of plants, and she always sees nature as an independent and active subject. The meanings generated by nature do not exist independently, but together form a complex network of meanings that are not affected by human beings. This perspective also reflects Dickinson’s De-anthropocentrism consciousness. Due to her careful observation of nature, Dickinson was able to insight into the “desire” of plants. In her nature poems, her way of looking at nature also influenced our perspective on nature and realized the transformation from human-centered to nature-centered. Nature is not an accessory that can only be changed with the changing environment, but a subject that can actively produce meaning. Finally, the boundary between human and object in her poems is eroded, which also reflects her De-anthropocentrism view of nature.