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Emily Dickinson（1830-1886） is one of the most famous poets in the history of American literature.Born in the 19th century,she was honored as the pioneer of British American modern poetry.Although isolated herself from the outside world for almost all her life,this smart and sensitive poetess had a rich and colorful inner world.Reclusive in her father’s house,she kept exploring the essence of life,nature,love,death and eternal life.Among the 1,775 poems that she has composed,more than 600 are talking about death, or subjects concerning death,accounting for more than 33.8%of all the poems.Most of these death-themed poems are about the positive attitude towards death,the yearning for the eternal life and the curiosity of the world after life.Dickinson’s preference for the subject of death has aroused great interest of the scholars from all over the world.For many years,they have done a lot of researches on the different aspects of her death-themed poems.However,up to now,the researches on this field are mainly concentrated on the stylistics,the reflection of art,the significance of religion and the factors that influence Dickinson’s composition of the poems.Researches on the death-themed poems from the perspective of linguistics are still rarely to see.Taking Appraisal System as the theoretical frame work,this thesis will explore Dickinson’s death-themed poems from the perspective of linguistics,aiming to dig out the hidden evaluative meanings in the poems and clarifying the poet’s attitude towards death.We will select 14 death-themed poems as the analytical material,and analyze each poem from the perspective of the three subsystems of Appraisal Theory,i.e.Attitude,Engagement,and Graduation.Through the analysis of the evaluative items,we,hopefully,want to uncover the evaluative meanings hidden in Dickinson’s death-themed poems.And from this new angle of interpreting Dickinson’s death-themed poems,we tentatively want to show a simpler way to appreciate Dickinson’s death-themed poems,as well as other poems,hoping that the findings of this research would be helpful for the readers to get a better understanding of the connotation of poems.
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