ENG364Y1 Lecture 2: Lecture 2 - Sylvia Plath
Document Summary
Confessional poetry: the soul"s therapy; using poetry as a way of confession. Stripping away of layers to get at the raw self. Legal right to private intimacy in the home concerns of domesticity. Confessional in speaking to someone (direct, oral, addressed to someone) Allegorical (relationship to the father and her husband but also the relationship to the. Identification isn"t a perfect correspondence ( may well be a jew ) Doesn"t have personal privileged access to know where she comes from (her father"s roots) Confessing sexual drives that are borderline sadistic/masochistic. Confession of sin critique of desire. Complicating the model of shame inside the speaker. Collective trauma and experiences -> collective confession. Women"s body being broken up in a gruesome/horrifying way. Strip tease -> commodification = deeply haunting and controlled by the speaker. Drama; staging her own exposure and performing it. Suicide happens in the private cell; speaker compromises on performing to an audience with the public resurrection and exposure.
