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21/01/2011

SYLVIA PLATH (1932 1963)

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an icon within 20 th century poetryAmerican and English poetry

expressed female experience of 20 th centurywomen

Co nfessi o nal p o etry renders pers o nal experience o r

em o ti o n as it actually is, regardless of socialconventions.

for readers, these poems have a d o cumentary value

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women writers expressing emotions which had notbeen acknowledged by traditional literature

a reacti o n against New C riticism poetry is to beseparated utterly from the author who made it

the issue of gen der since the 1960 s

H elene Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa ( 1975)the relationship between sexuality and writing

ecriture feminine (feminine writing)

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changes at the le vel o f meaning in the poetrywritten by women:

1) vo ice (female speakers, female I-voice )

2) themes

(women writers de-c o nstructing the idealize d image o f w o men; writing of their everyday experiences )

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P lath on her father and on his death:

an autocrat ... I adored and despised him, andprobably wished many times that he were dead.When he obliged me and died, I imagined that I hadkilled him.

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Glass J a r , autobiographical novel described the suicideattempt while in college

from La dy Lazarus:I have done it again.

One year in every ten

I manage it ----

...And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.

And like the cat I have nine times to die.

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This is Number Three.What a trashTo annihilate each decade....

The first time it happened I was ten.It was an accident....The second time I meantTo last it out and not come back at all

....DyingIs an art, like everything else,I do it exceptionally well.

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I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I've a call

....

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

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volumes: Th e Colossus, Ariel, Crossing t h e Water,Winter T rees, Collected Poems (edited by T. H ughes )

the poems she wrote over the last 9 months aremost striking; facing private horrorsH er poetry acted as a powerful lens through whichher o rd inary life was filtered and refigured withextraordinary intensity

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the suicidalness and rage b io graphical an dpsych o analytical approach

expressi o ns o f w o men s em o ti o ns in a society thatfrustrates the self-fulfilment of women

brilliant in imagination and craftsmanship

often complexly structured sentencesinfluenced by H ughes, Auden and Dylan Thomas

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inner turm o il; biographical facts, descriptions of flowers, high strung emotional states = extremestates of mind

hysteria difficult and deeply disturbing

re-su bj ecti vizati o n returning to the poet s own

subjectivity as opposed to T. S. Eliot and modernism

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intertwining the hist o rical an d the pri vate

(e.g. invocations of the H olocaust, in Daddy,German words, the Jews, concentration camps,swastika, fascists, etc. )death, mutilation, (re )birth, and physical violence

body imagery

a psychic desire to change cultural constructions of gender