HLVB0071DU Comparative LItterature: The Literary Work: Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath is one of the most prominent Postwar authors writing in English, most well known for her novel The BellJar (1963) and her last poetry collection Ariel (1965). Her life and death (e.g. her early success in America, her marriage to the British poet laureate Ted Hughes, her mental health struggles, and her suicide in 1965) made her susceptible to over-dramatized images of a fierce woman writer doomed to tragedy—from Robert Lowell’s comment that her late poems “are playing Russian roulette with six cartridges in the cylinder” to various depictions of Plath in popular culture. These gendered images will be subject to critical examination in this course. We will approach Plath’s oeuvre (esp. The Colossus and Other Poems, The Bell Jar and Ariel) through nuanced close readings, challenging the reductive categorization of her work as “confessional poetry”. This work course is designed in parallel to “Litteraturteori- og Analyse 1” and we will practice textual analysis by using concepts introduced in Litteraturteori og -analyse 1 like voice, enunciation, narratology, rhythm, sound, figures, tropes and literary imagery. Plath’s texts are a good testing ground for affect theory as well as psychoanalytical, poetological, poststructuralist and ecocritical approaches. In order to take the autobiographical elements of Plath’s work into account, comparative intertextual readings of her diaries and letters will be included. Moreover, we will explore questions of orality (Plath’s radio recordings and the sonic qualities of her written poetry), textual genetics (the problematic first printed version of Ariel and Collected Poems, which were edited by Ted Hughes, in comparison to Plath’s manuscripts and drafts), and translation (esp. Mette Moestrup’s Danish translation of The Bell Jar). We will also look at literature inspired by Plath like Elin Cullhed’s Eufori.

This course includes references to suicide and mental health issues.