Literary Identity of Sylvia Plath

The question of whether Sylvia Plath was a confessional poet or not, has dominated and been at the centre of most critical studies of her work, ever since the publication of her final collection of poems. In this book, I will try to do more than show how similar her poetry is to that of other confessional poets, like Robert Lowell, Theodore Roethke and Anne Sexton.

To achieve this purpose, I will present a very brief comparison of "Daddy", one of Plath's most characteristically confessional poems, with Anne Sexton's "My Friend, My Friend", focusing on the discovery of those elements that allow Plath to detach herself from the poetry of the group through the uniqueness of her verse. Moreover, in order to show whether or not Plath developed as a poet in her late poetry, I will compare two of her own poems that are very similar thematically - "Tale of A Tub" and "Ariel" - and the focus in the latter will shift from the examination of the romantic elements to be found in it, to a more general analysis, so as to show whether Plath was successful in fulfilling her own dream of becoming a poetess, of being able to stand side by side with the masters, the 'strong poets', in Bloomian terms. Finally, I will examine her poetry through a psychoanalytic prism, and propose a way of reading her poems, which even today remain very popular.