Sylvia Plath: The body and the act of representational death

Abstract

In Sylvia Plath’s Ariel poems, there are several dialogues between the biographical insertion that characterizes them and discourses of the religious, mythological, historical and literary tradition. In this web, the typically feminine lyrical voice of the plathian poems is constituted through a corporal imagery that makes it emerge before these discourses. Such imagery frequently pairs up with the fi guration of death in its diverse facets. However, the relationship between body and death goes beyond the thematic characterization. Indeed, it represents the proper process of writing. Thus, the Ariel poems can be seen as constituents of a poetics of dramatization of and delight in a dying act.