Violence and Aesthetics. Dynamics of Creation in Sylvia Plath's Poetry (PDF)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Erfurt, language: English, abstract: This paper is an attempt to shed a different light on the violent quality of Sylvia Plath's writing and to do justice to her artistic brilliance. Various insights into her work shall challenge common criticism and are intended to hint at the masterly skill with which Plath fundamentally conflates violence and aesthetics by for example transcending the boundary between reality and art, by bestowing verbal violence with a creative and identity-establishing power, and by rooting trauma psychopathology in rhetoric.

Sylvia Plath thus not only comes to terms with the collective trauma of the past, but also establishes imaginative violence as an essential mechanism of empowerment within art.

Plath has polarized and caused controversy ever since she passed away in 1963. The relatively tragic story of her life has constantly drawn readers' and scholars' attention, who seemed to be unable to withdraw from the mysterious spell she has had. In her lifetime Plath contributed various articles to popular journals, wrote a collection of short stories and published a book of poetry as well as her famous novel The Bell Jar, the latter edited under a pseudonym. However, except for the novel the opus she published herself is less known and not very controversial, in contrast to what followed after her death.

In the last few months before her suicide, Plath wrote a collection of poems, which is coined by a very aggressive tone, sinister character, and daring topics such as the Holocaust, hatred, and self-destruction. This contemplation as well as her journals, both of which were published posthumously by Plath's husband Ted Hughes, really were and still are the critical instances of controversy.