Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1980

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Pearce, Howard D.

Abstract

This study explores the two-dimensionality and artistlC distancing present within Sylvia Plath's poetry contained in Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, and Ariel. Plath's poetry inevitably presents the conflict inherent in the art versus life dichotomy; her poetry tends toward the reflexive, as its metaphors mirror poetry as the poetry mirrors life. Two-dimensional images recur, calling to mind the power of the artistic, as mirrors, photographs, paintings, silhouettes, outlines, and the black letter on the white page fairly inundate her works. In Plath's poetry, the reader finds a disclosure of poetry, a definition of poetry, and a reaffirmation of the supremacy of the imagination. Plath speaks to an elite audience; hers is a cry to and for the intellectual in a world of violence and chaos; here is the desperately needed source of pleasure for those who delight in the original metaphor, who long for the hunt for the similar within those things ostensibly dissimilar.

Extent

123 p.

Comments

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1980.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Identifier

FADT14029

Format

pdf

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