Sylvia Plath's Fiction: A Critical Study
Luke Ferretter
Abstract
This is the first study devoted to Sylvia Plath's fiction. Plath wrote fiction throughout her life, in a wide variety of genres, including women's magazine romances, New Yorker stories, comedy, social criticism, autobiography, teenage fiction and science fiction. She wrote novels before and after The Bell Jar. Most criticism, however, still focuses on her poetry, neglecting this large and significant body of her work. Many of her short stories have never been discussed before. Discussing all her novels and stories, and based on research in the three major archives of her work, this book is the ... More
This is the first study devoted to Sylvia Plath's fiction. Plath wrote fiction throughout her life, in a wide variety of genres, including women's magazine romances, New Yorker stories, comedy, social criticism, autobiography, teenage fiction and science fiction. She wrote novels before and after The Bell Jar. Most criticism, however, still focuses on her poetry, neglecting this large and significant body of her work. Many of her short stories have never been discussed before. Discussing all her novels and stories, and based on research in the three major archives of her work, this book is the complete study of Plath's fiction. The author analyses her influences as a fiction writer, the relationships between her poetry and fiction, the political views she expresses in her fiction, and devotes two chapters to the central concern of her novels and stories, the roles of women in contemporary society. In each case, Plath's work is set in the cultural context of the discourses and practices of the American 1950s.
Keywords:
Sylvia Plath,
fiction,
The Bell Jar,
archives,
literary influence,
politics,
roles of women,
America,
1950s
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2010 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780748625093 |
| Published to Edinburgh Scholarship Online: September 2012 |
DOI:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625093.001.0001 |
