1st Edition

The Other Sylvia Plath

By Tracy Brain Copyright 2001
    252 Pages
    by Routledge

    252 Pages
    by Routledge

    Despite being widely studied on both undergraduate and postgraduate courses the writing of Sylvia Plath has been relatively neglected in relation to the attention given to her life and what drove her to suicide. Tracy Brain aims to remedy this by introducing completely new approaches to Plath's writing, taking the studies away from the familiar concentration to reveal that Plath as a writer was concerned with a much wider range of important cultural and political topics. Unlike most of the existing literary criticism it shifts the focus away from biographical readings and encompasses the full range of Plath's poetry, prose, journals and letters using a variety of critical methods.

    1. THE OUTLINE OF THE WORLD BECOMES CLEAR Packaging Sylvia Plath Where is Sylvia Plath? The Plath Archives Dearly Beloved 2. STRADDLING THE ATLANTIC Your Puddle-Jumping Daughter Plath our Compatriot Where are We? Alienation and Belonging in the Bee Poems The Foreigner Within 3. PLATH'S ENVIRONMENTALISM Background Prose Circulating Venom The Complications of Masculinity Do You Do No Harm? 4. THE ORIGINS OF THE BELL JAR Bronte, Woolf and Plath A Comparison The Legacy Woolf and The Bell Jar Rethinking Buddy Willard The Misunderstood Mother and The Bell Jar Manuscripts Sylvia Plath's Villette 5. A WAY OF GETTING THE POEMS The Critics on Hughes and Plath Hughes's story The reciprocity of Influence between Plath and Hughes The Question of the Confessional Before Birthday Letters Textual Relationships and Poetic Conversations Bleeding Through the Page The Future 

    Biography

    Tracy Brain lectures in English and Creative Writing at Bath Spa University College.