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Chapter Two Literature Review Robert Frost’s poems were favored by many writers and widely read by ordinary readers. His poems were once spoken highly of by Ezra Pound, Lascelles Abercrombie, Edward Thomas, etc. The sales volume of his poetry anthology has always been very high, and his works were reprinted many times. Studies about Robert Frost’s poetry were also prevailing at home and abroad. Among numerous researches on his poetry since its first appearance, this thesis intended to mainly review the studies done by researchers in the recent decade. During this period, the study of Robert Frost’s poetry kept rapid development and achieved gratifying results. Sixty hundred and fifty academic papers have been published in academic periodicals in China. These studies can be roughly classified into the following several directions: themes, dual qualities of nature embodied in Frost’s poetry, the artistry and language features of his poems. As far as the theme of Frost’s poetry was concerned, many scholars focused on his nature theme. “Frost was a famous rural poet and wrote much in the Wordsworthian tradition” (Chen 195). He always made his hometown, New England, as the background of his poems and depicted mostly the landscape, including farms, mountains, trees, flowers, animals, etc. Some of his poems presented nature as a standard of beauty, which often gave readers pleasant feeling; and regarded nature as the source of inspiration, which stimulated the poet to deeply think about some problems. Yet, nature depicted in Frost’s poetry was not always pleasant, as Lionel Trilling pointed out, “the universe that he (Frost) conceives is a terrifying universe” (qtd. in Hyde Lathem 157). Even in Frost’s most cheerful nature sketches there was always a bittersweet quality. Frost’s poetry embodied both traditional and modern qualities. At the turn of the century, literary works were often branded with “city” and “industrialism” and various “new poetry movement” (Li 15). H