Abstract
One of the most powerfully persistent myths of western culture is the myth of the Doomed Poet, the figure touched by greatness that causes poetry to be written but that brings about the death of the writer, often at his (usually his) own hand. The canon of great poets is littered with the bodies of those who died tragically before their time—poets such as Chatterton, Shelley, Keats and Byron, names which summon up the image even for people who have never read any of the poems.
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Notes
David Holbrook, Sylvia Plath. Poetry and Existence (London, Athlone Press, 1976), p. 179.
Irving Howe: ‘The Plath Celebration: A Partial Dissent’ in Sylvia Plath. The Woman and the Work, ed. Edward Butscher (London, Peter Owen. 1979). p. 235.
Mary Kinzie, ‘An Informal Check List of Criticism’ in The Art of Sylvia Plath, ed. Charles Newman (Bloomington and London, Indiana University Press, 1970), pp. 283–300.
Mary Lynn Broe, ‘Enigmatical, Shifting My Clarities’ in Ariel Ascending, ed. P. Alexander (New York, Harper, 1985), pp. 283–319.
See S. Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies (London, Methuen, 1980), pp. 77–81.
This and all subsequent quotations of Aurelia Plath and of Sylvia Plath’s letters are taken from Letters Home, ed. Aurelia Plath (London, Faber and Faber, 1975).
Edition used: Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (London, Faber and Faber, 1966), p. 250. First published in 1963 by William Heinemann, London.
Margaret Uroff, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (Urbana, Chicago, London, University of Illinois Press, 1979).
A. Alvarez, The Savage God (London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1971), pp. 5–34.
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© 1987 Susan Bassnett
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Bassnett, S. (1987). The Many Sylvia Plaths. In: Sylvia Plath. Women Writers. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18600-6_1
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