Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words

By Steven Gould Axelrod

Book Overview

This is a "biography of the imagination," an inner narrative of Sylvia Plath's life and work. Combining psychoanalytical, feminist, and intertextual methods, Steven Gould Axelrod traces what Roland Barthes has called "the body's journey through language." After an introductory look at the roles played by language and silence in Plath's verbal universe, Axelrod explores the ways in which the poet's father--and father figures, including male literary precursors--interfered with her imagination even as they helped shape it. He describes Plath's ambiguous relations with her mother and with the two literary forebears who took the mother's place--Virginia Woold and Emily Dickinson. And he examines Plath's doubling relationship to her husband, describing how she eventually transferred her doubling impulse to her texts. Axelrod concludes by suggesting a link between Plath's discontinuous narrative of the double and her personal fate.

Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words offers illuminating and often revolutionary readings of all of Plath's major texts, including such poems as "Daddy" and "Three Women," her novel, The Bell Jar, and her letters and journals. At once sympathetic and incisive, it offers a compelling account of Plath's creative drive and personal history.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080184374X
• ISBN13: 9780801843747
• Release Date: March 1992
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.6"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Everything you need to know

This book is a terrific combination of Axelrod's interpretations and Plath's life. It does not rest only upon facts, but instead it does a beautiful job of twisting together her life, her writing and her psychological condition. If you love Plath and her writing, this is the book for you. It is intelligent and written for people who not only want to know more about the life of a very troubled and talented woman, but those who also love her poetry.