Unbinding the Female Prometheus: L’Écriture féminine in Selected Poetry of Sylvia Plath

• Thesis title in Czech: Odpoutání Prométhei: L'Écriture féminine ve vybrané poezii Sylvie Plathové
• Thesis title in English: Unbinding the Female Prometheus: L’Écriture féminine in Selected Poetry of Sylvia Plath
• Key words: L’Écriture féminine, francouzský feminismus, ženská poezie, Sylvia Plath, Hélène Cixous
• English key words: L’Écriture féminine, French feminism, women’s poetry, Sylvia Plath, Hélène Cixous
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2014/2015
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: Mgr. Pavla Veselá, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 30.06.2015
• Date of assignment: 15.07.2015
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 11.08.2015
• Date and time of defence: 05.09.2017 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 05.08.2017
• Date of proceeded defence: 05.09.2017
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: PhDr. Hana Ulmanová, Ph.D.

Guidelines

The definition of one’s own femininity and its reflection in poetic language are two recurring issues examined by contemporary feminist critics. In the nineteenth century, women’s poetry began to consistently challenge the opinion that true poetry is essentially masculine and that a woman poet is inevitably an inferior poet. Sylvia Plath could hardly be considered an inferior poet – despite her early death, Plath’s poetry is considered to be immensely influential. It was adopted as an example by feminist critics who attempted to define the branch of American women’s poetry reaching back to poets such as Anne Bradstreet and Emily Dickinson. From the point of view of feminist critics, Plath’s works illustrate the fact that women’s poetry has not only its history, but also its language. One can thus discover interesting parallels between Hélène Cixous’s concept of l’écriture féminine and Plath’s poetic language. Both Plath and Cixous were concerned with the redefinition of their feminine identities, both were preoccupied with the image of male authority, and both paid attention to the use of language in their literary works. For Cixous, as for other French feminists, such as Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray, Western culture is phallogocentric. To disrupt the traditional (masculine) discourse, French feminists neither proposed a total split between “the male” and “the female” nor did they encourage women to usurp power in patriarchal culture; they rather advocated new ways of thinking and writing about women. The concept of l’écriture féminine encouraged women writers to reconsider not only the subject matter of their poetry, but also their poetic language. Cixous formulated her basic arguments for “writing women’s bodies” in “The Laugh of the Medusa”: “Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies – for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal.”¹ Although Plath committed suicide before “The Laugh of the Medusa” was published, her poetry opened a new poetical landscape, which was later explored from the point of view of l’écriture féminine, and which was illustrative of the impact of rules imposing restrictions on both female voice and body. Although Marilyn Manners claims that neither Plath nor Cixous were seriously considered literary figures till approximately 1980s, their works managed to create a whole new dimension in American literary canon previously dominated almost exclusively by white male poets. Using l’écriture féminine as conceptual framework then creates a new perspective on Plath’s poetry. The aim of this thesis is to consider the concept of l’écriture féminine in selected poems by Sylvia Plath, and to illustrate the ways in which Plath’s poetic strategy contributed to the creation of her image as a representative of a “woman in her inevitable struggle against conventional man.”²
1^� Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” trans. Keith Cohen, and Paula Cohen, Signs 1.4 (1976): 875.
2 ^�Cixous 875.

References

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