This essay investigates the prospect of confessionalism’s potential resurgence in contemporary poetics through female poets on Instagram and discusses its relevance and likeness to mid 20th century confessional poetry. Two case studies of highly popular Insta- poets Rupi Kaur and Alicia Cook are presented and a close reading of a few of their poems is introduced in order to investigate their adaptation of what I call an over-confessional style that addresses issues such as mental health, family, sexuality, and the perception of the female body. Kaur and Cook employ visual strategies and forms in their poetry in order to achieve an over-confessional style which is not simply individualistic but carries such larger social and public concerns. Studies of Insta-poetry are scarce due to its newness and partly due to the widespread dismissal of the genre by academics and researchers. However, because of the growing popularization of digital media and Insta-poetry as a literary mainstream more studies of the genre are needed and there has been a rising critical interest in the genre. The public nature of Instagram and the autobiographical lyric style of confession have made Insta- poetry very accessible and relatable to readers, resulting in a new relationship between the poet and the reader. I demonstrate that Kaur’s and Cook’s writing displays autobiographical, aesthetic and thematic tendencies commonly associated with confessional poetry, but also pushes the confessional mode to its limits. Apart from broader structural comparison, I attempt a literary analysis of Insta-poetry in order to provide an understanding of the social aspect and the visual strategies of Insta-poets.

This dissertation comprises two parts: Part I, which discusses use of second person pronoun in contemporary American poetry; and Part II, The Museum of Coming Apart, which is a collection of poems. As confessional verse became a dominant mode in American poetry in the late 1950s and early 60s, so too did the use of the first-person pronoun. Due in part to the excesses of later confessionalism, however, many contemporary poets hesitate to use first person for fear that their work might be read as autobiography. The poetry of the 1990s and early 2000s has thus been characterized by distance, dissociation, and fracture as poets attempt to remove themselves from the overtly emotional and intimate style of the confessionals. However, other contemporary poets have sought to straddle the line between the earnestness and linearity of confessionalism and the intellectually playful yet emotionally detached poetry of the moment. One method for striking this balance is to employ the second person pronoun. Because "you" in English is ambiguous, it allows the poet to toy with the level of distance in a poem and create evolving relationships between the speaker and reader. Through the analysis of poems by C. Dale Young, Paul Guest, Richard Hugo, Nick Flynn, Carrie St. George Comer, and Moira Egan, this essay examines five common ways second person is employed in contemporary American poetry-the use of "you" in reference to a specific individual, the epistolary form, the direct address to the reader, the imperative voice, and the use of "you" as a substitute for "I"-and the ways that the second-person pronoun allows these poems to take the best of both the confessional and dissociative modes.

Cette thèse de doctorat a pour but d’analyser l’œuvre des poètes américaines Anne Sexton et Sylvia Plath à l’aune des études féminines et de genre en s’attachant à la question du mythe et du désenchantement. Plath et Sexton ont été étiquetées « poètes confessionnelles » ; il s’agit dans un premier temps de comprendre les mécanismes sur lesquels repose cette appellation qui participe de la construction de mythes autour des deux poètes et de les déconstruire. Plath et Sexton se sont connues à la fin des années 50, s’influençant l’une l’autre. Elles ont en commun une poétique du désenchantement, de leurs poèmes « confessionnels » à leurs réécritures de contes de fées et de mythes que l’on peut qualifier d’ « anti-contes ». Si leur style poétique diffère, les thèmes qu’elles abordent se répondent en écho, du trauma incestueux au corps féminin, de la femme au foyer à la représentation dichotomique de « la femme » en Madone et putain. Nous abordons ces sujets dans un deuxième temps en les reliant aux notions de voile et de pudeur. L’injonction à la pudeur provient en partie de la scène poétique bostonienne des années 50 à 70, de l’influence puritaine du poète Robert Lowell et des critiques misogynes. Cette étude s’applique dans un troisième temps à relier littérature et société en mettant en lumière l’influence du contexte patriarcal et poétriarcal sur et dans l’œuvre de Plath et de Sexton. / This Ph.D. thesis analyzes the literary works of American poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath in light of Women’s and Gender Studies and considers the notions of myth and disenchantment. Plath and Sexton were labeled “confessional” poets; this study’s first section seeks to understand the underlying mechanisms of this appellation and how it participated in the construction of myths around the two poets and also aims to deconstruct these myths. Plath and Sexton met at the end of the ‘50s and influenced each other. Their poetics of disenchantment are a common trait in their literary works, from their “confessional” poems to their rewriting of fairy tales and myths which may be called “anti-tales.” Although their poetic styles differ, the themes they pursue are similar, from the incestuous trauma to the female body, from the American housewife to the representation of women through the Madonna/slut dichotomy. In this thesis’s second section, these topics are scrutinized and considered in relation to the notions of veil and modesty. Appeals for modesty stem in part from the Bostonian poetic stage of the 50s-70s, the puritan influence of New England poet Robert Lowell and the misogynistic critics of the time. This study’s third section links literature and society and emphasizes the influence of patriarchal and “poetriarchal” context on and in Plath’s and Sexton’s poetry and prose.