Portrait of the Artist as a Model for Sylvia Plath, or Waking Up to Finnegans Wake (original) (raw)
This article explores James Joyce's literary masterpiece, Finnegans Wake, and how it specifically influenced the poet and writer Sylvia Plath. This is part of a series of posts summarizing and quoting from books that were important to, and I believe, shaped Sylvia Plath’s work, since the majority of Plath fans today have not read them. This was first posted on www.juliagordonbramer.com.
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"The same anew": James Joyce's Modernism and its Influence on Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar
College Literature, 2018
This article traces the extent of Sylvia Plath’s engagement with the Irish modernist, James Joyce. It contributes to a significant strand of Plath scholarship by increasing knowledge of the literary networks Plath and her work engages. It does so by first examining the evidence extant in her published work and archive. It establishes Plath’s long-standing interest in Joyce’s writing, and traces in her notes and marginalia a consistent focus on Joyce as artistic example. It then establishes a relationship between Plath’s reading of Joyce and the künstlerroman genealogy that Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and The Bell Jar share. This article shows that The Bell Jar self-consciously performs Joyce’s influence, with his Finnegans Wake featuring prominently in The Bell Jar as an alienating canonical authority. Finally, in showing The Bell Jar’s departure from the linearity and self-assuredness of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, it identifies Plath’s künstlerroman as superseding the modernist conventions performed by A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. This paper thus traces the twin imperatives of Joyce’s influence identifiable in Plath’s reading and writing; a recursive tendency, emphasizing Plath’s literary tradition, and a focus on the past, and a heuristic tendency, advocating for Plath’s own innovation, looking to the future.
SYLVIA PLATH: A Frosted Profile
International Journal of Aquatic Science ISSN:2008-8019, 2021
Very few things in literary history have created an impact that has been associated with the suicide of Sylvia Plath. The sad circumstances that have preceded and followed her death have made it even more sinister and intriguing and their shadows have cast a huge veil of uncertainty and darkness which have within no time created a literary and cultural polarization. It also side-lined the modern poetry movement which was just picking up its lost reins after the second world war. Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes should have played a major role in such a revival. On the other hand, a whole generation of literary critics, writers, biographers, and social enthusiasts have focussed more than due attention to biographical details that do not contribute much to literary biography. They were engaged in a battle to establish or bring to light the gross injustice that has been perpetrated against an innocent girl trapped in a wedlock.
SYLVIA PLATH'S HARROWING JOURNEY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TEMPERAMENT ARE REFLECTED IN HER WORKS
IASET, 2022
Sylvia Plath was a powerful and respected poet of the twentieth century. Plath had a following in the literary community by the time she took her own life at the age of 30. Her work drew the attention of a large number of readers over the years, which saw in her singular verse an attempt to catalogue despair, violent emotion, and a death obsession. Despite all of her popularity for her amazing work, the question remains: was she happy? Why did she end her life so soon? What prompted her to take such a bold step? To discuss this, I've chosen Sylvia Plath's life journey and her psychological behaviour had an influence on her works.
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