Thumbnail Image
Publication

“Insane for the destination:” Disrupting the Teleological Impulses of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel and Adrienne Rich’s Diving into the Wreck

Brooksher, Noah Christopher
Abstract
Despite their complex poetry, the critical scholarship of Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich has been dominated by oversimplistic and reductive biographical and feminist readings that fail to engage with the nuanced texts. By contrast, this paper intends to examine these poets through a post-structuralist feminist framework. Not only does such a perspective challenge pre-existing critical assumptions of both poets’ work, but it also draws attention to their key differences: their treatment of selfhood and history. In Ariel, Plath’s rejection of a final, transcendent telos informs a poetics that challenges the romantic humanist view of the uniform subject predicated on logocentrism. Diving into the Wreck, by contrast, relies on a linear, teleological view of history and language in order to reify a stable subject necessary for liberation.
Description
Date
2016-05-01
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Collections
Undergraduate Honors Theses
Show all metadata
Download Dataset
Files
BrooksherHonorsThesis.pdf
Adobe PDF, 501.61 KB
Rights Holder
Usage License
Embargo
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
Citation
Advisor
Hart, Henry
Donaldson, Susan
Putzi, Jennifer
Castillo, Victoria
Department
English
DOI
URI
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/handle/internal/12711
Embedded videos