Short essay questions
1.Emily Dickinson is now recognized not only as a great poetess on her own right but as a poetess of considerable influence upon American poetry of the present century. What are the qualities of her poems?

2. Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”.

标准答案： 1. There are four characteristics of Emily’s poems: A. Dickinson’s poems are usually based on her own experiences, her sorrows and joys. B. Love is another subject Dickinson dwells on. C.Many poems Dickinson wrote are about nature, in which her general skepticism about the relationship between man and nature is well expressed. D.Dickinson’s peotry is unique and unconventional in its own way. Her poems have no titles, hence are always quoted by their first lines. 2. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock depicts a timid middle-aged man going (or thinking of going) to propose marriage to a lady but hesitating all the way there. It takes the form of soliloquy, an interior monologue like that of Browning’s. Prufrock is the image of an ineffectual, sorrowful, tragic twentieth-century Western man. He craves love but has no courage to declare himself. He despairs of life. He discovers its emptiness and yet has found nothing to replace it. Thus the poem develops a theme of frustration and emotional conflict. The title of the poem is ironic in that the “Love Song” is in fact about the absence of love. Prufrock represents the spiritual impotence of archetypal modern man. The theme of the poem is modern spiritual barrenness, the despair and depression that followed the First World War, the sterility and turbulence of the modern world, and the decline and break-down of Western culture.