The Peanut-Crunching Crowd and the Rubber crotch: How Sylvia Plath’s legacy has suffered by the hands of sexism, over-eager feminists, schadenfreude, and gender politics?

Type :

Presentation

Pages :

8 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

10/10/2008

Category :

Philosophy & literature

Sub category :

Literature

Oboulo.com selection criteria

$ 16.95 Add to cart

Summary :

Introduction.
1. Plath's poetry - abstract, symbolic and distant from the confessional poets.
The sexist dismissal of Sylvia Plath's work.
Domesticity and family as political minefields for a female poet.
The role of Plath's husband in bulding her sentiments.
Description of Plath in Hughes's interviews and personal anecdotes.
Marginalization of Plath's work by scholars in two ways.
1. Wholeness of body.
2. Wholeness of mind.
The first feminist approach to Plath's poetry.
1. The focus on Plath's body.
2. Narbeshuber's preference to contain her interpretation of Plath's poetry to the realm of the physicality.
3. Plath's feminine body as an uncomplicated whole.
The other argument that has resulted in the general dismissal of Sylvia Plath's poetry.
1. The unconscious cultural and social conceptions which influenced her.
The ambiguity of her work.
Conclusion.

Abstract

O'Rourke goes on to say that although poems like "Daddy" or "Lady Lazarus" seem "crudely self-involved," the majority of plath's poetry is abstract, symbolic, and in general quite distant from the confessional poets with whom she is grouped. Despite this, plath's poetry is often viewed today as overwrought, histrionic, or hysterical, when in fact it was symbolic, calculated, and often purposefully stripped of specific biographical references. The poems are often described in overly emotional or psychoanalytic ways: "neurotic," "savage emotion," "pathological," and "sadistic." plath's fantastical life and death lend her to a type of literary celebrity that polarizes her work, creating both profound love as well as profound distaste. As celebrities are products of the cultural landscape, they become archetypes or ideals; they are no longer individuals, but representations of culture, race, or nationality. They become the property of the society who grants them popularity.