In the opening of Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” one glimpses a troubled young woman struggling to break free from patriarchal confinement. In a stark play on imagery, she equates her tomb of darkness ...to a “black shoe” where she has submissively “lived like a foot//Barely daring to breathe or Achoo” for her entire life (Plath 2-3,5). Plath opens the poem with an oppressive tone of confinement. Her tone is that of a victim unable to break free from the powerful pressing of her father. The daughter is acknowledging her life-long imprisonment through the image of conformity and obedience. Her testimony, “You do not do, you do not do/Anymore.” is an awakening, an ethereal understanding, she is no longer satisfied with being under her father’s foot (Plath 1-2). She mocks her submissiveness and fear by “Barely daring to breathe.” or express her autonomy outside of the domineering treatment designated by her father (Plath 5). “Daddy” juxtaposes the extremely childish and infantile dependency on the image of father versus the inherent desire to break free from the entrapment of masculine dominance. As Maher Mahdi points out in the article “From a Victim of the Feminine Mystique,” Plath is using “aspects of objectification” to create a breakdown of the typical family dynamic between father and daughter (98). The struggle is real, vigorous, and traumatic to the daughter speaking blatantly throughout the lines of “Daddy.” The battle rages as father and daughter fight metaphorically within the confines of the speaker’s mind. Plath offers the war-torn country as a backdrop to ease the reader into a sense of disquiet and upheaval. There is something obscenely immature in her attachment to the deceased father. She loves and hates him, desires her independence yet craves the security of her dependency, and she longs for him and yet strives to exorcise his demon from within her own soul. This emotional upheaval allows the reader to assess the speaker’s mental anguish and analyze “Daddy” on a more complex level. This study will explore 1) The juxtaposition of victim versus villain in the familial relationship of father and daughter; 2) The daughter’s search for autonomy and her unhealthy Oedipus complex; 3) Establishing identity beyond infantile attachment, or as Maher Mahdi points out, breaking free from immaturity requires a certain amount of viciousness in order for the daughter’s true liberation (Mahdi 100); 4) The exposure of the Jekyll and Hyde persona, which is noted by Isabelle Travis as the “blurred line” between recognizing the issues and finding one’s own part in the familial downfall (Travis 279).
The poems in this manuscript explore the emotional landscape of an emotionally repressed speaker to explore opposing themes of isolation and connection; self-denial and self discovery; and rage and ...hope. It is perpetually nighttime for this speaker, and the poems often take place in surrealist, haunting impressions of ordinary settings, mostly in the domestic sphere. This collection features recurring images such as birds, cats, roadkill, long nighttime walks, and light switches which are always being turned off. All of these elements serve to imbue the poems with the sense of ghostliness and invisibility felt by the speaker
The Form of the Book Phillips, Angus; Kovač, Miha
World Literature Today,
05/2023, Letnik:
97, Številka:
3
Journal Article, Book Review
Recenzirano
Comparison with digital content has led to a renewed emphasis on the production quality of printed books, as publishers see the value for readers of the design, paper, and illustrations. Russian ...oligarchs may never open a book but still want to fill their libraries with leather-bound volumes; chic cafés play vinyl records and use books to decorate the walls. The book is not only a welcome refuge from the work environment of screens, and a detox from our skimming habit, but also a tool that helps to boost our cognitive abilities, such as depth and breadth of vocabulary and sustained attention-valuable by-products of deep reading. * READING Reading is of course not only book reading, and it is happening in many different ways- through work, study, and social interactions. ...there may also be a resurgence in the popularity of physical books, as some people prefer the tactile experience of reading a printed book or value the aesthetic of a bookshelf full of books.
Neste artigo, são levantados os destinos que o nome e a imagem de Sylvia Plath tomaram após sua morte e, para isso, são analisadas as censuras impostas nas publicações póstumas da sua obra. Recorro a ...três publicações: Ariel, Letters home by Sylvia Plath e The journals of Sylvia Plath. A partir de Rose (2013), Malcolm (2012) e Carvalho (2003), é esclarecido que o objetivo dessas intervenções era oferecer uma imagem conveniente aos responsáveis pelo seu espólio. São discriminados os papéis do público e da crítica na recepção dessas primeiras edições para, enfim, averiguar a impossibilidade de capturar Plath em uma identidade rígida, visto que o uso dos elementos biográficos em sua obra é mais próximo de um processo de subjetivação do que uma fixação em uma verdade única.
By analyzing censorship imposed on Sylvia Plath’s posthumous published works, this paper raises the destinations which Sylvia Plath’s name and image took after her death. Three publications were investigated: Ariel, Letters Home by Sylvia Plath and The Journals of Sylvia Plath. Through Rose (2013), Malcolm (2012) and Carvalho (2003), this research determines that such interventions aimed to offer an image of the author which was more convenient to those responsible for her estate. It also distinguishes the roles of the public and the critics in receiving those first editions and ascertains the impossibility of capturing Plath into a rigid identity, since the biographical elements used in her works are closer to a subjectivation process than to fixing a unique truth.
En ese artículo se plantean los destinos que corrieron el nombre y la imagen de Sylvia Plath tras su muerte y, para ello, se analiza la censura impuesta en las publicaciones póstumas de su obra. Se utilizaron tres publicaciones: Ariel, Letters home by Sylvia Plath y The journals of Sylvia Plath. De Rose (2013), Malcolm (2012) y Carvalho (2003), se aclara que el objetivo de estas intervenciones era ofrecer una imagen conveniente a los responsables de su patrimonio. Se discriminan los roles del público y la crítica en la recepción de estas primeras ediciones para, finalmente, constatar la imposibilidad de plasmar a Plath en una identidad rígida, ya que el uso de elementos biográficos en su obra está más cerca de un proceso de subjetivación que de una fijación en una sola verdad.
This article considers how readers engage with Sylvia Plath's poetry collection Ariel (1965) - deemed as particularly 'difficult' - on Goodreads, in the context of online amateur reviewing. George ...Steiner's (1978) fourfold typology of difficulty (contingent, modal, tactical and ontological) informs our approach and leads us to explore the ways in which difficulty is talked about and dealt with, especially since the poetry genre faces resistance in educational settings, as Peter Benton (2015) points out. Our discussion stems from a qualitative analysis of 25 positive and 25 negative Goodreads reviews of Ariel, from which we derive an inductive typology of readerly attitudes. We find that, across the positive/negative spectrum, three readerly attitudes prevail that can be aligned with particular reader types: The Self-Deprecator, The Re-Reader, and The Senser. The Self-Deprecator emphasises their lack of poetic skills, which makes literary difficulty hard to overcome. The Re-Reader foregrounds their need to engage with Ariel further to increase their appreciation of it. The Senser focuses on the feelings and sensations experienced, which means that difficulty is not construed as a barrier to meaningful receptive experiences. We argue the above-mentioned categories enhance our comprehension of the wide array of readers discussing poetry online.
Parte de la construcción de la voz poética se consigue también cuando ella misma participa del misticismo espacial natural, donde la voz poética y el personaje se identifican y están dentro de lo ...natural: «on the grass, under the pines, I sit up starkly, for even to recline reminds me of the stances of love, and I am unable to bear the pain of so much remembering. A principio del texto: «My future is already planted there, and my hope getting ready to sprout with the cherry blossom» (Smart 1991: 93), en mitad del texto »O waste of moon, waste of lavish spring blossoms and lilac as I pass down the path» (Smart 1991: 97), y al final »Bow down thou tall cherry-tree, I am going meet my lover» (Smart 1991: 99). Por una parte, la que identifica a las enfermeras con gaviotas; y por otra, la analogía del final del poema donde expresa la simetría entre el suero médico que recibe para nutrirse y el mar: «They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, (.. ,)they bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep»/»The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, /and comes froma another country far away as health» (Plath 2007: 38). Plath retuerce así el símbolo floral: »Their red- ness talks to my wound, it corresponds./They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down,/upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their colour, a dozen red lead sinkers round my neck» (Plath 2007: 40).
Inthis article I analyze Sylvia Plath’s reception in Spain during the Francoist dictatorship. Considering the feminist features that the author and her oeuvrepresent, I examine the conclusions drawn ...by the Censorship Board when the Spanish publishing houses requested to issue Plath’s works in translation. The censorship and import files stored at the General Archive of the Administrationin Madrid confirm thatseveral publishers repeatedly applied for permission to translate her only novel, The Bell Jar, into Spanish and Catalan from 1967 to 1982; a Spanish compilation of her poems in 1974; and to import her famous poetry collection, Ariel,in 1968. Nevertheless, the censors’ notes and verdicts reveal that her literary depth was neither admired nor understood by the ones who authorized, censored, or rejected the different editions of her work.
Neste artigo apresentamos algumas reflexões sobre a releitura do personagem bíblico Lázaro em duasproduções literárias do século 20: o poema “Lady Lazarus”, de Sylvia Plath, e a narrativa Lázaro, de ...Hilda Hilst. Por meio dessa leitura comparada —que aqui se apresenta não tanto uma estrutura fechada de tópicos, mas sim em fragmentos reflexivos abertos, acentuados por certo exercício de estilo—, procuramos mostrar e comentar formas modernas de apropriação de uma narrativa que remonta aos primórdios da cultura ocidental. Para reforçar o elemento intertextual, tangenciamos outras releituras sobre o mesmo personagem, e, principalmente, recorremos a ponderações sobre as temáticas da angústia e da morte. O percurso reflexivo mostra uma apropriação de Lázaro que se constrói em caráter de subversão, mantendo a ressurreição do personagem não para mostrar o triunfo da vida sobre a morte, mas sim o seu oposto.
Mireille Gagné (Isle-aux-Grues, 1982), an eminent writer in the current Quebecois literary landscape, publishes Bois de fer in 2022, a collection of poetic fragments narrated by a femaletree subject. ...Gagné defines tills work as an ecological and biting text that maintains hope until the end, aiming to generate new life and save it from extinction. In this article, we analyse how Gagné demonstrates a profound connection with the Earth to raise the reader's awareness of the systemic oppression exerted by humans towards other forms of life. Through a posthuman perspective, we explore how this earthly rootedness is based on a horizontal apprehension of existence that literature allows to enhance through an affectionate gaze and empathetic imagination towards the other. Similarly, from an ecocritical standpoint, we examine how the narrative poetic voice evokes the ecological ilhiess of the planet caused by the current capitalist system, leading to destruction, while alerting the reader to the gravity of the situation with the hope of being able to reverse it in time.
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