1,474
Views
1
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
ARTICLES

Dreamwork: Sylvia Plath's Cold War Modernism

Pages 263-273 | Published online: 18 Dec 2013
 

Abstract

This article proposes that Plath is best understood as a Cold War modernist, notwithstanding her continuing insertion into canonical literary histories as a ‘confessional’ poet. It reassesses the psychoanalytic burden of her writing in terms of its vexed relationship to the ideologies and institutions of the long 1950s, and in particular, to the post-war apparatus of ego psychology. Paying particular attention to the Bee Poems of 1962, I discuss Plath's attempt to retrieve the remnants of the legacy of the Surrealist avant-garde within the dominant register of institutionalized psychiatry. Her privileging in the later poetry of psychical and sensory intensities, I argue, shows the impact of Freud's description, in The Interpretation of Dreams, of the operation of dreams and of the dream image.

Notes

1 Recent surveys and anthologies which deploy the ‘confessional’ label include Ashton (Citation2013b), Beach (Citation2003) and Gray (Citation2004).

2 For an early and influential formulation of this paradigm, see Nadel (Citation1995).

3 As early as 1936, the Museum of Modern Art displayed a large number of his works in its path-breaking exhibition ‘Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism’ (see Britzolakis Citation2007).

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.