Orientador: Eric Mitchell Sabinson / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-03T22:27:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Oliveira_RenatoMarquesde_M.pdf: 14631472 bytes, checksum: 3264df22d3993a17a71974e8b876c591 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2004 / Resumo: Numa tentativa de compreensão do fenômeno literário conhecido como POESIA CONFESSIONAL, esta dissertação tem por objetivo estudar a obra da poeta Anne Sexton (1928 - 1974). O exame de um dos rumos que a poesia norteamericana tomou desde 1945 serve como ponto de partida e pretexto para uma análise crítica sistemática que resulta na elaboração de uma antologia traduzida e comentada de poemas de Sexton, tida como uma das mais representativas figuras da poesia dos EUA no século XX. / Abstract: In order to understand the literary phenomenon known as Confessional Poetry, this dissertation examines the work of Anne Sexton (1928-1974), regarded as one of the most representative American poets of the second half of the twentieth century. The exploration of this vein or sub-genre, one of the directions taken by the American poetry since 1945, serves as a starting point and pretext for a systematic critical analysis of Sexton's work, resulting in an annotated anthology of translations of her poems. / Mestrado / Mestre em Teoria e História Literária

This thesis is the first study using contemporary spatial theory, including cultural geography and its precursors, to examine and compare representations of space in the poetry of three mid-twentieth century American poets: Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton. Because of the autobiographical content often foregrounded in their work, these poets have been labelled Confessional. Previous criticism has focused primarily on the ways in which they narrate (or draw on) their personal lives, treating accompanying descriptions of their surroundings primarily as backdrops. However, these poets frequently manifest their affective states by using the pathetic fallacy within structures of metaphor that form a textual mapping of the physical space they describe. This mapping can be temporal as well as spatial; the specific spaces mapped in the poem s present are often linked to memories of earlier life or family. These spaces include psychiatric, general, and penal institutions, parks and gardens, nature (especially coastal settings), and the home (almost always a place of tension or conflict). Each poet addresses these broad types of space differently according to their evolving subjective relationship to them. These relationships are in turn strongly influenced by their social class and gender: for the two women, their experience of their own bodies as prescribed space, in relation to the restrictive and objectifying female role that was imposed on them, is critical. Also, critical in shaping the poets experience of space are post-World-War II socio-cultural and demographic changes in the United States, notably suburbanisation, consumerisation and the consolidation of a therapeutic culture . Interwoven with these influences are major political concerns of the period such as the Cold War with its accompanying surveillance and conformism and the threat of nuclear annihilation. In the work of all three poets, awareness of these modern fears fused with traditional Gothic motifs to permeate their descriptions of spaces with anxiety, bitterness, and even dread in a rejection of the synthetic optimism of the American Century and commercial culture. Other criticism has touched on many of these themes in relation to one or another of the poets, but this study, by way of the theme of space, offers comparison and synthesis that aims to shed new light on their work and its relation to the period during which they wrote.

This dissertation discusses the way in which mid-20th century American female poets Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Sexton, and Gwendolyn Brooks addressed anxieties around seeking, keeping, and surviving home spaces while incorporating elements of formal poetic structure (including metre, stanzaic configurations, and rhyme). Susan Fraiman, in Extreme Domesticity: A View from the Margins, suggests that domestic space and practice can become sites of improvisation, rebellion, and refuge. Building on this theory, I show how form and domestic subject matter can interact to signify active responses to trauma resulting from childhood abandonment, physical/sexual abuse, homophobia, madness, and systemic racism. I argue that poetic form at its most effective does not function as an homage to either patriarchal canonical models of restraint or craftspersonship but animates the work from the inside out and effectively creates poem-spaces that are metaphorical “homes” rather than “houses”.   My work adds to the fields of American poetry and prosodic scholarship by incorporating close reading techniques that neither follow New Criticism mandates that privilege authorial choice/structural integrity over biographical and sociopolitical resonances nor assign specific meaning to how form is used. Instead, this project encourages readers, students of poetry, and practitioners to rethink how formal structures in poetic work can emerge from and engage with the highly personal and how the implementation of formal technique can potentially offer shelter and a means of articulating trauma and resistance whilst extending into the public sphere (either thematically or through the vehicle of performance) to offer intimacy and forge community. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The mid-20th century American female poets Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Sexton, and Gwendolyn Brooks addressed anxieties around seeking, keeping, and surviving home spaces while incorporating elements of poetic form (including metre, stanzas, and rhyme). I show how form and domestic subject matter can interact to signify active responses to trauma resulting from childhood abandonment, physical/sexual abuse, homophobia, madness, and systemic racism. I argue that form at its most effective should be neither a “container”—a “house” of words—nor a sign that the poet is conservative and/or old-fashioned. Rather, I invite my readers to consider the formal poem as a potential “home” in which the structure becomes an extension of the inner personal forces that animate it, helping it to offer shelter and a means of resistance to the writer and reader/listener, as well as forge connections in the public sphere, both thematically and in performance.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p.53-56).

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