Foreign Literature Studies ›› 2021, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (1): 129-140.

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The “Ekphrasis” in Sylvia Plath's Early Poetry

Wei Lei   

  • Published:2021-03-05
  • About author:Wei Lei is a PhD candidate at the College of Liberal Arts, Yangzhou University (Yangzhou 225127, China) and an associate professor at the School of Foreign Languages, Huaiyin Normal University (Huai'an 223000, China), specializing in modern and contemporary American literature, comparative literature, and comparative poetics. Email: wstones0311@163.com

Abstract: As compared to the study of Plath's collection of poems, Ariel, her poems written before 1960 haven't received much attention from the academic circles. In fact, the cross-border artistry of her early poems should not be neglected even though they were written during her formative years. This is especially so when all the measures taken by Plath, a renowned painter poet, who used the “ekphrasis” as a medium in creating the simulation between language and image, reproducing poetry out of visual art, and integrating the technique of painting, a spatial art, into poetry, a temporal art, are splendidly displayed in her early poetry. Given the current scholarly interests to pursue the relationship between literature and images as a popular subject and underscore the colorization of literary description and visual experience, these characteristics may clearly prove the artistic value of her early poetry.

Key words: Plath, early poetry, ekphrasis, artistic value

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