Citation

Bollobás E. Psychiatr. Hung. 2019; 34(2): 87-97.

Affiliation

Eotvos Lorand Tudomanyegyetem Bolcseszettudomanyi Kar, Amerikanisztika Tanszek, Budapest, Hungary, E-mail: bollobas.eniko@btk-elte.hu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Magyar Pszichiatriai Tarsasag)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

31417000

Abstract

The study focuses on two features of Sylvia Plath's poetry that may be directly linked to her illness, her mask poetry and her female Bildung, where the former is informed by her sense of plural selfhood, while the latter gives account of the failures of her creative self-constructions. Although no direct connection can be set up between life and work even in the case of a confessional poet, it is probably safe to claim that multiple personality may manifest in a plural poetic self, while the Self developing in Bildung narratives contradicts the idea of a split personality. Enikô Bollobás explores the heteroclite diversity of artistic vision through discussing the pluralism of poetic masks and identities, insisting that, in the spirit of late modernism, no self-interpretive frame exists for Plath, one that would hold together the diverse identities. The long poems and poem cycles give narratives of female Bildung, portraying the woman's diverse attempts to break out of the traps of patriarchy; some of these are failed attempts, yet others offer allegories of the poet's creative self-constructions.

Language: hu