PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION AND EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY IN THE WORKS OF SYLVIA PLATH AND ANNE SEXTON: AN EXISTENTIAL PERSPECTIVE

Year 2018, Issue: 66, 24 - 34, 15.05.2018

M. Metin Barlık Aydın Görmez

Abstract

Any deep insight into the inter-contextual layers of the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton and the assigned socio-political contexts related to their poetic and prosodic outputs and outlooks has entailed an existential perspective for an adequate understanding and in-depth interpretation of them in order to shed light on the issue of existential crisis, which manifested itself in the broadest sense in the life of these literary figures, and which gave way to personal transformations, cataclysmic life crisis, political motives of contention, self-identification, longing and yearning for death, loss of identity, search for building a new identity and indomitable motives for committing suicide.

This type of poetic output which can best be described as confessional has become popular in the 1950s in artistic imagination in response to consumer-oriented cultures and life styles reflective of luxurious conformity, and which flourished due to conjunctural milieus and peculiar socio-political contexts in the American society of the period.

Keywords

Crisis, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Los of Identity

References

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