Patricia Grisafi - Breaking Down Plath

1 Cover

2 Title Page BREAKING DOWN PLATH PATRICIA GRISAFI

3 Copyright

4 Dedication

5 Foreword

6 Acknowledgments

7 About the Author

8 Introduction

9 Chapter 1: Who Was Sylvia Plath?PLATH'S CHILDHOOD A SCHOLARSHIP GIRL THE RISKS OF READING AUTOBIOGRAPHICALLY A TURNING POINT MEETING TED HUGHES GROWING AS A WRITER THE CREATION OF PLATH THE MYTH THE TROUBLE WITH BIOGRAPHY

10 Chapter 2: Plath in Her Historical Context COLD WAR CULTURE GENDER AND SEXUALITY MENTAL HEALTH ON THE EVE OF SECOND WAVE FEMINISM

11 Chapter 3: Plath's PoetryINTRODUCTION TO THE POEMS PLATH'S INFLUENCES POETRY AS POLITICS RECURRING THEMES IN PLATH'S WORK THE POETRY

12 Chapter 4: The Bell Jar, Short Fiction, and EssaysINTRODUCTION TO THE FICTION THE BELL JAR SHORT FICTION AND ESSAYS

13 Chapter 5: Plath's Journals and Letters AUDIENCE AND SELF‐FASHIONING WITNESSING THE CREATIVE PROCESS WRITING AS AN OUTSIDER

14 Chapter 6: Plath's Legacy CULTURAL INFLUENCE THE GROWTH OF PLATH STUDIES FAMILY LEGACY SUMMARY

15 Bibliography

16 Index

17 End User License Agreement

1 Chapter 1 Figure 1.1 Plath at the beach, 1954.

2 Chapter 3Figure 3.1 Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes on their honeymoon, 1956.Figure 3.2 Sylvia Plath and her mother, Aurelia Plath, with Plath's children...

3 Chapter 4Figure 4.1 Sylvia Plath in her home at 55 Eltisley Avenue, 1956.

4 Chapter 5Figure 5.1 Handwritten draft of Sylvia Plath's poem “Stings” on Smith Colleg...

1 Cover Page

2 Table of Contents

3 Title Page BREAKING DOWN PLATH PATRICIA GRISAFI

4 Copyright

5 Dedication

6 Foreword

7 Acknowledgments

8 About the Author

9 Introduction

10 Begin Reading

11 Bibliography

12 Index

13 End User License Agreement

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PATRICIA GRISAFI

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COVER ART & DESIGN: PAUL MCCARTHY

For my son Damien

In “Context,” a short work of prose published in The London Magazine in February 1962, Sylvia Plath discusses how the issues of her time impact on her writing. It concludes eloquently:

Surely the great use of poetry is its pleasure—not its influence as religious or political propaganda. Certain poems and lines of poetry seem as solid and miraculous to me as church altars or the coronation of queens must seem to people who revere quite different images. I am not worried that poems reach relatively few people. As it is, they go surprisingly far—among strangers, around the world, even. Farther than the words of a classroom teacher or the prescriptions of a doctor; if they are lucky, farther than a lifetime.