The Plathosphere is anticipating Representing Sylvia Plath, a collection of essays on Plath edited by the estimable duo of Sally Bayley (Oxford University) and Tracy Brain (Bath Spa University). The publisher is Cambridge University Press and the publication date is looking like April or June 2011.
The table of contents looks like this:
Introduction: ‘Purdah’ and the Enigma of Representation by Sally Bayley and Tracy Brain
Part I: Contexts
Aesthetics and Ideology: Judging Plath’s Letters by Jonathan Ellis
The Photographic Chamber of the Eye: Plath Photography, and the Post-Confessional Muse by Anita Helle
‘O the tangles of that old bed’: Fantasies of Incest and the ‘Daddy’ Narrative in Ariel by Lynda K. Bundtzen
Plath and Torture: Literary and Cultural Contexts for Plath’s Use of the Holocaust by Steven Gould Axelrod
Part II: Poetics and Composition
‘The Trees of the Mind are Black, The Light is Blue’: Sublime Encounters in Sylvia Plath’s Tree Poems by Sally Bayley
Coming to Terms with Colour: Plath’s Visual Aesthetic by Laure de Nervaux-Gavoty
Madonna (of the Refrigerator): Mapping Sylvia Plath’s Double in ‘The Babysitters’ Drafts by Kathleen Connors
Procrustean Identity: Sylvia Plath’s Women’s Magazine Fiction by Luke Ferretter
Part III: Representation
Confession, Contrition, and Concealment: Evoking Plath in Ted Hughes’s Howls & Whispers by Lynda K. Bundtzen
Fictionalising Sylvia Plath by Tracy Brain
Primary Representations: Three Artists Respond to Sylvia Plath
Adolescent Plath—The Girl Who Would Be God by Suzie Hanna
Bodily Imprints: A Choreographic Response to Sylvia Plath’s Poppy Poems by Kate Flatt (with Sally Bayley)
Stella Vine’s Peanut Crunching Plath by Sally Bayley
Many of these essays take root from papers given at the 2007 Sylvia Plath 75th Year Symposium at Oxford in October 2007. There is no doubt that these essays will add significantly to a growing scholarship on Plath which makes use of not only primary materials, but of Sylvia Plath herself as a subject; a subject that shifts and is being remade and reinterpreted by writers and artists.
The table of contents looks like this:
Introduction: ‘Purdah’ and the Enigma of Representation by Sally Bayley and Tracy Brain
Part I: Contexts
Aesthetics and Ideology: Judging Plath’s Letters by Jonathan Ellis
The Photographic Chamber of the Eye: Plath Photography, and the Post-Confessional Muse by Anita Helle
‘O the tangles of that old bed’: Fantasies of Incest and the ‘Daddy’ Narrative in Ariel by Lynda K. Bundtzen
Plath and Torture: Literary and Cultural Contexts for Plath’s Use of the Holocaust by Steven Gould Axelrod
Part II: Poetics and Composition
‘The Trees of the Mind are Black, The Light is Blue’: Sublime Encounters in Sylvia Plath’s Tree Poems by Sally Bayley
Coming to Terms with Colour: Plath’s Visual Aesthetic by Laure de Nervaux-Gavoty
Madonna (of the Refrigerator): Mapping Sylvia Plath’s Double in ‘The Babysitters’ Drafts by Kathleen Connors
Procrustean Identity: Sylvia Plath’s Women’s Magazine Fiction by Luke Ferretter
Part III: Representation
Confession, Contrition, and Concealment: Evoking Plath in Ted Hughes’s Howls & Whispers by Lynda K. Bundtzen
Fictionalising Sylvia Plath by Tracy Brain
Primary Representations: Three Artists Respond to Sylvia Plath
Adolescent Plath—The Girl Who Would Be God by Suzie Hanna
Bodily Imprints: A Choreographic Response to Sylvia Plath’s Poppy Poems by Kate Flatt (with Sally Bayley)
Stella Vine’s Peanut Crunching Plath by Sally Bayley
Many of these essays take root from papers given at the 2007 Sylvia Plath 75th Year Symposium at Oxford in October 2007. There is no doubt that these essays will add significantly to a growing scholarship on Plath which makes use of not only primary materials, but of Sylvia Plath herself as a subject; a subject that shifts and is being remade and reinterpreted by writers and artists.