"Mother of otherness": Exploring the Stakes of Semiotic ‘Madness' within the Poetry of Sylvia Plath

dc.contributor.advisorZwarg, Christina, 1949-
dc.contributor.authorFord, Caroline
dc.date.accessioned2021-07-13T17:39:50Z
dc.date.available2021-07-13T17:39:50Z
dc.date.issued2021
dc.description.abstractThis thesis presents the ways in which confessional poet Sylvia Plath traversed literary boundaries through her anti-normative poetics and strove to rupture what psychoanalytic critic Julia Kristeva delineates as the conventional linguistic symbolic order. By analyzing Plath's "Poems, Potatoes,""Mirror," "Childless Woman," "Edge," and "Contusion," I reject a strictly biographical reading of her work and advocate for one rooted in Plath's specific, vivid, and often shocking language. By interpreting these five poems through the lens of the Kristevan semiotic, examining Plath's motions toward Kristeva's conception of the abject, and engaging with the work of feminist disability studies, I illustrate the ways in which Plath extended far beyond acritical pathologization of 'madness' in the face of the symbolic limitations of the patriarchal social order.
dc.description.sponsorshipHaverford College. Department of English
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10066/23584
dc.language.isoeng
dc.rights.accessBi-College users only
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
dc.subject.lcshPlath, Sylvia. Poems. Selections
dc.subject.lcshPlath, Sylvia -- Criticism and interpretation
dc.subject.lcshKristeva, Julia, 1941- -- Criticism and interpretation
dc.subject.lcshSemiotics
dc.subject.lcshLiterature and mental illness
dc.title"Mother of otherness": Exploring the Stakes of Semiotic ‘Madness' within the Poetry of Sylvia Plath
dc.typeThesis
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name:
2021FordC.pdf
Size:
264.56 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Thesis
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name:
2021FordC_release.pdf
Size:
129.44 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
** Archive Staff Only **
Collections