Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus". Cultural and social context

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: keine, University of Hamburg, course: American Poetry & Poetics, language: English, abstract: The name of Sylvia Plath is intrinsically tied to the literary movement of ConfessionalPoetry. Her poem "Lady Lazarus" is often regarded as the prime example of this genre, as itis "an apparent forecast of Plath's suicide" (Middlebrook 644) only one year later. But theidea of a 'confessional' poetry that directly refers to the poet's personal experience has leadPlath-Criticism astray for many years. Critics "have discussed Plath's life and work as ifthey were exactly the same thing," (Brain 11) and have drawn bizarre conclusions byassuming "that Plath's writing can be used as a reliable source for diagnosing her mentalcondition." (Brain 12). It is obvious that this kind of immediate understanding ofConfessional Poetry leads nowhere. As Tracy Brain puts it, in her essay about the dangers ofreading Sylvia Plath's work as an unfiltered outpour of personal experience ("DangerousConcessions: Sylvia Plath"): How can we ever hope to distinguish the extreme diction and address that isprompted by lived events from a vividly imagined drama that is the result of an expertlyassumed style? (13).The answer is: We cannot. Still, one should not altogether ignore the context of theConfessional movement when interpreting Sylvia Plath.But how can Confessional Poetry be dealt with, without getting caught in the traps andpitfalls of a biographic reading?This essay will first try to detect the underlying principles of the so-called 'ConfessionalPoetry' and position it within literary history. By revealing some of the influences andconventions of Confessional Poetry it aims to uncover the deceiving strategies of this type ofpoetry. The subsequent interpretation of Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus" will then try toconcentrate on the cultural and social context the poem was produce in and exam