الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) was an American poet who was known for her highly personal, confessional verse, and who won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die (1966). She was born Anne Gray Harvey in Newton, Massachusetts, and married to Alfred Muller Sexton II at age nineteen. Sexton is seen as the modern model of the confessional poet. She made the experience of being a woman a central issue in her poetry, and though she endured criticism for bringing subjects such as menstruation, abortion, and drug addiction into her work, her skill as a poet transcended the controversy over her subject matter. Generally, critics see Sexton as a poet whose writing matured over time: ”Starting as a relatively conventional writer, she learned to roughen up her line ... to use as an instrument against the ’politesse’ of language, politics, religion [and] sex” (Rothenberg 330). As such, this mini dissertation aims to investigate the confessional characteristics of Anne Sexton’s poetry through a gynocritical approach. Through multiple selections of her poetic oeuvre, the researcher traces the poet’s development of confessional vision, and its ramification on her status as a female poet, carving her feminist space in an often disturbing, and disturbed world. In tracing the development of Anne Sexton’s poetic vision and technique, one notices that this development has been as consistent and as systematic as any other great poet. It has also been a development towards a mature understanding of the women’s condition; a fact which occupied Sexton’s mind during her long poetic career. It has also been her concern to find the necessary solutions for this unfavorable condition. |