By using rigorous conventional structure in her early work Anne Sexton was able to successfully contain some of her severe psychological instabilities stemming from childhood in poetic form. Sexton's artistic direction underwent a sharp change midway into her poetic career after she wrote the volume Transformations, a collection of story-poems based on narratives from the Grimm fairy tales. In this collection, Sexton took on the external persona of a witch, and with her new voice, she was boldly able to re-tell her version of the Grimm tales. The new persona enabled Sexton to shed her previous voice of passivity, and instead criticize humanity by using satire and humor. Unfortunately, this movement in her work was an exercise in self-exploitation as the larger, cultural arena of Grimm put off any chance of working out her private problems. After Transformations Sexton had come to the realization of her self-exploitation and decided to even further separate herself from humanity by continuing to work with even more generalized, cultural forms--a movement that ultimately led her to mythologize her own death.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.69619 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Marusza, Julie A. |
| Contributors | Reichertz, R. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001386555, proquestno: AAIMM91678, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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