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Themes and poetic style of Sylvia Plath
Themes and poetic style of Sylvia Plath
Imagery in sylvia plaths writing
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The 1950s and 1960s were viewed as the start of not just the age of “hippies” but also an age of different revivals and movements that Sylvia Plath involved herself in; one of them being the most underground of the revivals – the occult revival.. The occult revival was seen as a back seat to many of the other movements happening during the ‘50s and 60s and some even say Plath just used it as a metaphor in her poetry. However, by looking at her poems, such as “Lady Lazarus,” “The Kolossus,” and “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath pulls the occult into them as way to communicate her feelings to the living and deceased.
In the 1960s the revival for the occult was beginning. One of the prominent forms of the occult was the creation of neo-paganism and Wicca, created by Gerald Gardener. These religions held heavy belief systems in the use of magic and myth. This was an age, as Margot Adler, author on the evolution of Paganism, puts it, which was a “ferment of ideas and ideals and of creative risk-taking” (Guiley 3). Society was no longer in a stage of “hissing” at the idea of the supernatural and were accepting of the use of supernatural objects such as Ouija boards, tarot decks, and horoscopes. This gave way for more creative thoughts and could incorporate the supernatural for Plath not as a depiction of fantasy but what traversed through her mind in the natural world.
Though not directly involved with the movement, Plath seems influenced by it, especially in her poem “Ouija,” which spoke of summoning a god of some sort. Living with Ted Hughes, Plath would use a Ouija board to ask questions such as the title of their next poem or the name of their children. She would constantly refer to the spirit within the board as Pan whose “family god was nam...
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...al Elements In Sylvia Plath's Poetry." Indian Streams Research Journal 2.3 (2012): 414-419. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Dec. 2013.
Materer, T. "Occultism As Source And Symptom In Sylvia Plath's `Dialogue Over A Ouija Board.'." Twentieth Century Literature 37.2 (1991): 131. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Dec. 2013.
"Ouija by Sylvia Plath." Ouija, a poem by Sylvia Plath. poets love Poem at allpoetry. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. .
Plath, Sylvia. The unabridged journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962. New York: Anchor Books, 2000. Print.
"Sylvia Plath's Spirit Guide." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2013. .
Vendler, Helen. Poems, poets, poetry: an introduction and anthology. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1997. Print.
McCarthy, Erin. “A Brief History of the Ouija Board”. 31 October 2012. Web. 3 March 2014.
In American society, the common stereotype is that the father has the role of the dominant figure in the household. Sylvia Plath and Sharon Olds may come across as two seemingly different poets, however, they are really quite similar, especially in their driving forces behind their writing styles in poetry. The lives of Plath and Olds are both expressive of the realities of a father-dominated family, in which both of these poets lost their fathers at a young age. This is significant because both poets have faced a similar traumatic event that has had everlasting effects on their adult womanhood, which is reflected in their writings. For both these woman, their accesses to father-daughter relationships were denied based on life circumstances. Ironically, their fathers were their muses for writing and are what made them the women they are today.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath: 1950-1962. 430 Ed. Karen V. Kukil. Transcribed from the original manuscripts at Smith College. New York: Anchor, 2000.
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. "Sylvia Plath (American author)." 23 September 2013. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 9 April 2014 .
Plath, Sylvia. The Journals of Sylvia Plath. Ed. Ted Hughes and Frances McCullough. New York: Ballantine Books, 1982.
Plath was born in the seaside town of Winthrop, Massachusetts during the year of 1932. In her first eight years of life, Plath was troubled with the birth of a new sibling, the death of a parent, and the start of a war. These eight years were the calm before the stormy life of Sylvia Plath. As an only child, Plath felt threatened by the new baby in the family. Her new sibling, Warren, sparked a disdain for children that Plath would harbor for the rest of her life. In 1940, Plath’s father died and essentially robbed the children of a proper relationship with their mourning mother. The family moved inland where Plath focused on writing poetry until she began to attend Smith College in 1950.
"About." Personal Blog, n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2015. [When finding an explanation for the similarities between the writers, it is important to play close attention to biographies. In case the psychoeconomic factors that Ruonco describes are true, then biography constitutes most of the development of the Sylvia Plath affliction. Moreover, the biography provides an insight into the views of the author for a better and more accurate understanding of her poetry. Furthermore, it is imperative to use her auto-statement since she referres to her "muse" as something out of her control which can be traced to Kaufman's
Giles, Richard F. “Sylvia Plath.” Magill’s Critical Survey of Poetry. Ed. Frank N. Magill, b. 1875. Pasadena: Salem Press, 1992.
Known for her distinctive voice and exploration of dark, violent emotions, Sylvia Plath was one of the most acclaimed poets of the twentieth century. In her poems she discusses many common themes such as family relations, marriage, self-image and death in unique ways. Among these topics, she expresses a particularly original perspective on motherhood and its effect on the individual that often deviates completely from the traditional view of child rearing. In her poems “Moonrise,” “Heavy Woman” and “Morning Song,” Plath conveys the idea that motherhood, although necessary, is a personal as well as physical sacrifice that involves much pain and suffering.
Sylvia Plath uses a diverse array of stylistic devices in "Lady Lazarus," among them allusion,
The Troubled Consciousness of Sylvia Plath as seen in “The Arrival of the Bee Box”
Sylvia Plath’s life was full of disappointment, gloominess and resentment. Her relationship status with her parents was hostile and spiteful, especially with her father. Growing up during World War II did not help the mood of the nation either, which was dark and dreary. At age 8 Plath’s father of German ancestry died of diabetes and even though their relationship was never established nor secure, his death took a toll on her. “For Sylvia, who had been his favorite, it was an emotional holocaust and an experience from which she never fully recovered” (Kehoe 90). Since she was so young she never got to work out her unsettled feelings with him. Even at age eight, she hid when he was around because she was fearful of him. When she was in his presence his strict and authoritarian figure had left an overpowering barrier between their relationship. Sadly enough by age eight Plath instead of making memories with her dad playing in the yard she resented him and wanted nothing to do with him (Kehoe). These deep-seated feelings played a major role in Plath’s poetry writings. Along with his “hilterian figure,” her father’s attitude towards women was egotistical and dismissive, uncondemning. This behavior infuriated Plath; she was enraged about the double standard behavior towards women. Plath felt controlled in male-dominated world (Lant). “Because Plath associates power so exclusively with men, her conviction that femininity is suffocating and inhibiting comes as no surprise” (Lant 631). This idea of a male-dominated world also influenced Plath’s writing. Unfortunately, Plath married a man just like her father Ted Hughes. “Hughes abandonment apparently stirred in her the memories and feelings she had struggled with when her ...
Moore, R. Laurence. The Occult in America. University of Illinois Press, Chicago, IL. 1983. Pages 135-161.
Through her dark and intense poetry, Sylvia Plath left an eternal mark on the literary community. Her personal struggles with depression, insecurities, and suicidal thoughts influenced her poetry and literary works. As a respected twentieth century writer, Sylvia Plath incorporated various literary techniques to intensify her writing. Her use of personification, metaphors, and allusions in her poems “Ariel,” “Lady Lazarus,” and “Edge”, exemplifies her talent as a poet and the influence her own troubled life had on her poetry.
The poetry of Sylvia Plath can be interpreted psychoanalytically. Sigmund Freud believed that the majority of all art was a controlled expression of the unconscious. However, this does not mean that the creation of art is effortless; on the contrary it requires a high degree of sophistication. Works of art like dreams have both a manifest content (what is on the surface) and latent content (the true meaning). Both dreams and art use symbolism and metaphor and thus need to be interpreted to understand the latent content. It is important to maintain that analyzing Plaths poetry is not the same as analyzing Plath; her works stand by themselves and create their own fictional world. In the poems Lady Lazarus, Daddy and Electra on Azalea Path the psychoanalytic motifs of sadomasochism, regression and oral fixation, reperesnet the desire to return to the incestuous love object.