Reviews for The haunting of Sylvia Plath

The average rating for The haunting of Sylvia Plath based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-05-06 00:00:00 Karen Gamblin This is almost certainly the best book I've ever read on Plath; also possibly the most difficult one. It's difficult to classify, as Rose integrates lit-crit with a great deal of metacriticism on the iconography (the "fantasia," as T Hughes calls it, and a phrase Rose lifts from him for this text) enveloping Plath. It's not a biography, as Rose has no particular interest in the 'facts' of the life, though one might say it's still powerfully invested in the idea of narrating Plath's life. Rose seems to be something of a psychoanalytic critic, though her logic works far more deconstructively than I usually expect in Plath-critics with a psychoanalytical bent: this is very good, because though she certainly discusses structures of fantasy and desire, she's also very capable of considering these in a more discursive (and not pathologizing) fashion. She's unflinching when it comes to discussing those who have claimed the 'right' of talking about Plath (Anne Stevenson, David Holbrook, Ted & Olwyn Hughes), but also enables us to think about WHY the 'talk' about Plath has had such a fractured history--why Plath (the "Marilyn Monroe of the literati") allegorizes broader-reaching cultural anxieties around feminism, sexuality, violence (and desire *for* violence), &co&co. I could go on and on, & perhaps will at a later date, upon a thorough re-reading (I had to move quickly through it this time, as I was trying to use it for a paper with a quick turnaround)--nevertheless, this is absolutely required reading for any serious Plath scholars. Probably for anyone interested in the question of female icons, morbid celebrity fascinations, and the transitions in these conceptions of women in the public eye in the post-war period--but I doubt some of the psychoanalytic discussions will be as useful for those less invested in Plath (who, to my mind, has been so destroyed by psychoanalysis and biographical readings with foundations in that discourse). It is a challenging read, but of the four (jesus, I should get another hobby?) books on Plath I've read so far this year--and of the ones I've read in the past--this was by far the most influential in my own work. Or at least, it definitely feels that way now. Read also: Narbeshuber's "Confessing Cultures" if you like this one.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-08-05 00:00:00 Tonya Hardy U potpunosti mi se uklapa Silvijina Groznica 41 uz čitanje ove knjige na ovoj temperaturi. :(