earticle

영어

Sylvia Plath has been regarded as a woman poet who attempted to overcome the male- dominant literary tradition and to find her own poetic voice in the 1950's and early 1960's when feminism did not emerge yet. In order to identify the nature of the male-centered poetic tradition, this article pays attention to the Petrarchan love convention, in which the male poet idealizes his mistress and weakens her power at the same time. Plath, well-versed in the literary convention of the past as an English major, appropriates the technique of blazon, which was a staple of male poets. This technique of blazon, which seemingly idealizes the poet's mistress, actually fragments her body and catalogues her body parts, thus showing off the male poet's power over her. Plath's father, who has exerted influence on her as a powerful male muse, is in turn emasculated through the same technique. However, her poems also abound with images of fragmented and incapacitated female body parts. This fragmented female body represents the marginalized voice of Plath among the male-dominant literary tradition. Therefore the image of fragmented body of both men and women can be interpreted as the process in which a marginalized woman-poet symbolically overcomes her passive role through dissecting and breaking up the most potent male, that is her father.