MEANS OF EXPRESSING LANGUAGE AND GENDER IDENTITY IN THE POETRY BY ANNE SEXTON, SYLVIA PLATH, ADRIENNE RICH
Keywords:
language, gender, identity, language identity, silence motif, language motif, ‘women’s writing’ (‘écriture féminine’), femininity, masculinity, feminine identity, lyrical persona
Abstract
The article deals with the issues of construction of language and gender identity in the poetry by Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich. It studies poets' attitude to the language and gender, it describes what motifs and images were employed by contemporary American female poets to express their vision of the language and silence. Special attention is paid to the concept of women’s writing, modern theories of corporeality, sexuality and the problems of the body and the language, which have been considered as major features of women’s poetry in the second half of the 20th century. The theoretical background of the article is based on the works of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Jane Gallop, Alicia Ostriker, in which they defined the concepts of women's writing and language, women's subject, bodiness and corporality. The article analyzes a number of related issues: firstly, it determines how well-known theories of women's writing are consistent with the peculiarities of the female experience and its realization in a poetic text, especially on the level of the themes and motifs; secondly, it studies how the motifs of language and silence are expressed in the poetry by Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich, what are the similarities between their imagery and what are the differences. The article analyses modern feminist works as well as gender studies.References
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2. Frith, Gill. Women, Writing and Language: Making the Silences Speak. Introducing Women’s Studies. Feminist theory and practice / ed. by Diane Richardson and Victoria Robinson. The Macmillan Press LTD, 1993. Pp. 151 – 177.
3. Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century. 3 vols. New Haven, Conn., 1988–1989.
4. Gould, Jean. Modern American Women Poets. New York, 1984.
5. Hoogestraat, Jane. ‘Unnameable by Choice’: Multivalent Silences in Adrienne Rich’s “Time’s Power”. Violence, silence, and anger: women’s writing as transgression. / ed. by Deirdre Lashgari. – p. 27.
6. Joyce Wexler. The uncommon language of modernist women writers. Women's Studies. An interdisciplinary journal. P. 571-584. URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/00497878.1996.9979139.
7. Juhanz, Suzanne. The Excitable Gift: The Poetry of Anne Sexton. Naked and Fiery Forms. Modern American Poetry by Women. A New Tradition. New York, Octagon Books, 1976. Р.117–143.
8. MacGowan, Christopher J. Twentieth-century American poetry. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. xvi, 315 p. (Blackwell guides to literature).
9. Plath, Sylvia. The Collected Poems / ed. by Ted Hughes. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. 1981.351p.
10. Rich, Adrienne. The Dream of a Common Language: Poems, 1978, p. 13.
11. Rich, Adrienne. The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected Poems 1950 – 2001. New York-London : W. W. Norton & Company, 2002. 352 p.
12. Rich, Adrienne. The Will to Change: Poems, 1968 – 1970. New York-London : W. W. Norton & Company, 1971. 70 p.
13. Sexton, Anne. The Complete Poems. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981. 623 р.
14. Wendy Martin and Sharon Becker. Writing as a Woman in the Twentieth Century. OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, LITERATURE. Oxford UniversityPress USA, 2018.
15. Фізер, Іван М. Американське літературознавство: Іст.-критич. нарис. К.: Вид. дім «Києво-Могилянська академія», 2006. С. 27.
Published
2022-05-02
How to Cite
Honsalies-Munis, S. (2022). MEANS OF EXPRESSING LANGUAGE AND GENDER IDENTITY IN THE POETRY BY ANNE SEXTON, SYLVIA PLATH, ADRIENNE RICH. Anglistics and Americanistics, 1(19), 116-126. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.15421/382213
Section
RELEVANT ISSUES OF LITERARY STUDIES AND STYLISTICS
