Date Thesis Awarded
5-2016
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
English
Advisor
Henry Hart
Committee Members
Susan Donaldson
Jennifer Putzi
Victoria Castillo
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.
Recommended Citation
Brooksher, Noah Christopher, "“Insane for the destination:” Disrupting the Teleological Impulses of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel and Adrienne Rich’s Diving into the Wreck" (2016). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 948.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/948
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
