Diss. Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2007.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 48-52).

The purpose of this study is to trace the artistic evolution in the poetry of Sylvia Plath. Early in her life she established in her work a philosophical bifurcation which continued through much of her poetry. On the one hand, she was drawn towards a world of stark "reality": bleak, scientific and oppressive; on the other, she created a world of dream, a world of private imagination in which she expanded and compressed "reality" at will. This latter world afforded the poet the necessary escape from the often cruel and insensitive former one.

Thesis (M.A.)--Central Connecticut State University, 2004. / Thesis advisor: Susan Gilmore. " ... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-84). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 48-52). Also available in print.

Thesis--University of Wisconsin. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 208-217).

Thesis (M.A.)--Eastern Illinois University, 1974. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 33).

University, Diss., 2004--Mainz.

On a creative and a personal level, Sylvia Plath seems to have been fascinated by the relationship between life and death. Her work reflects an ongoing preoccupation with duality and a sense of tension between two opposing forces suffuses virtually every poem she wrote in the period from 1956 to early 1963. Because her attitude to both life and death is deeply ambivalent, Plath's poetry rests on a strong awareness of conflict and her art is characterized by a continual pull between extremes. This thesis is an examination of how she uses images of life in poems that ostensibly deal with death.While Plath draws on the events of her own life for her poetic material, she also converts her personal experiences into a universal myth. She was familiar with Robert Graves's eclectic study of the pagan nature deity, The White Goddess, and she seems to have incorporated part of his symbolism into her own code of images. In particular, she adopts Graves's triple goddess of nature as one of the dominant figures in her created world, for the White Goddess is associated with life and death alike.Plath's dichotomy of life and death works on different planes. Firstly, she frequently envisages the self as divided and the opposition between life and death takes on the dimensions of an internal psychological war. Secondly, she extends the battle between life and death to the creative sphere. Thirdly, she explores the idea of life as a journey from birth to death. The White Goddess is linked with the three natural realms of earth, sky and underworld. And Plath relies largely on seasonal, lunar and chthonic images in her poetry. Furthermore, the three colours of the goddess - white , red and black - are the dominant hues of her poetry.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.