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

Yıl 2018, Sayı: 66, 24 - 34, 15.05.2018

M. Metin Barlık Aydın Görmez

Öz

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.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Crisis, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Los of Identity

Kaynakça

• Bassnett, S. (2004). Sylvia Plath: An Introduction to the Poetry. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Bronfen, E. (1992). Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Chesler, P. (2005). Women and Madness. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Durmuş, E. & Yıldız, F. (2014) Hart Crane’s “The Bridge” as an Example of Modernist Poetry. Journal of Social Sciences, Near East University VII (2), 91. Fussell, P. (1989). Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War. New York: Oxford University Press. Goodspeed-Chadwick, J. (2012). Interpretations and Implications of Trauma and Narrative in Sylvia Plath's Ariel. Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1(2), 117-146. Karlinsky, S. (1985). Marina Tsvetaeva: The Woman, Her World, and Her Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kottana, A. D. (2014). Anxiety Syndrome in the Poetry Sylvia Plath. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University. http://hdl.handle.net/10603/29880 10.01.2016 Madi, N. A., & Neimneh, S. (2015). An Analysis of the Suicidal Tendency in Sexton’s Confessional Poems: A Reading of “Sylvia’s Death” and “Suicide Note”. International Journal of Language and Literature, 3(1), 137-142. http://dx.doi.org/10.15640/ijll.v3n1a18) 20.01.2016 Oates, J. C. (1973) The Death Throes of Romanticism: the Poetry of Sylvia Plath. http://celestialtimepiece.com/2015/11/24/the-death-throes-of-romanticism-the-poetry-of-sylvia-plath 11.01.2016 Plath, S. (1981). Collected Poems. (Ed. Ted Hughes). London: Faber and Faber. Plath, S., (1982). The Journals of Sylvia Plath. (Ed. Ted Hughes and Frances McCulough) New York: Anchor Books. Rohman, C. (2014). Dancing with Deleuze: Modernism and Imperceptible Animal. Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism (Ed. Paul Ardoin, S. E. Gontarski, and Laci Mattison). New York: Bloomsburry. Rose, J. (1993). The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Scheerer, C. (1976). The Deathly Paradise of Sylvia Plath. The Antioch Review, 34(4), 469–480. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4637827 11.01.2016 Seybolt, R. A. (1986). Donde Habite El Olvido: Poetry of Nonbeing. Inti: Revista de literatura hispánica. 1 (24), 127-136. http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1348&context=inti 14.01.2016 Sexton, A. (1981). The Complete Poems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company. Tsvetaeva, M., Levertov, D., & Field, A. (1964). Five Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva. The Russian Review, 23(2), 131–134. http://doi.org/10.2307/126517 22.01.2016