Echoes traveling off from the center : contemporary poetic engagements with the poetry of Sylvia Plath

Abstract

The introduction of the thesis makes clear the vital need for this study and explains how its methodology privileges poetic practice rather than critical narratives as it centres on close readings of a range of poems by many diverse poets who have engaged with Plath in a multitude of ways. The introduction also defines what is meant throughout by the often ambiguous critical term ‘influence’ and explains how the thesis proceeds by replacing the Bloomian model with a more inclusive and accurate one that comes by way of T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost and more recently by Paul Muldoon in his own mode of reading and textual analysis which is then applied in a sustained way throughout Chapter Four.