Sylvia Plath: A Critical Study

by Tim Kendall

Sylvia Plath was one of the most gifted and innovative poets of the twentieth century, yet serious study of her work has often been hampered by a fierce preoccupation with her life and death.

Tim Kendall seeks to redress the balance in his detailed and dispassionate examination of her poetry. Taking a roughly chronological structure, he traces the unique nature of Plath's poetic gift, finding - with reference to Letters Home, The Bell Jar, The Journals and the stories and autobiographical reminiscences - an essential unity in her inspiration, tracing the evolution of recurring themes and at the same time exhibiting her accelerated development from the formal restraint of The Colossus through to the ground-breaking techniques of Ariel.

He shows that Plath was a poet constantly remaking herself, experimenting with different styles, forms and subject matter.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Biography, Literature

240 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2001

Reviews

[Steven Critelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kendall's book contains one of the best studies of Sylvia Plath's prosody and compositional methods. By closely reading the poems, digging deep into the substrata of the Plath's language, unearthing metaphor, simile, and structural components, like the leitmotivs that echo throughout her work as a whole, he discovers much that has been overlooked in the best critical reviews, e.g., Jacqueline Rose's The Haunting of Sylvia Plath and Judith Kroll's Chapters in a Mythology. While Kendall does use biographical references as a loose guideline and companion index, biography does not lead or overdetermine his interpretations, which chiefly arise from the textual content itself.

Kendall does great service by tracking the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson in Plath's landscape poems, like "Hardcastle Crags," "Two Campers in Cloud Country," "Waking in Winter," "Wuthering Heights" and others. He undertakes and delivers a very welcome investigation of the transitional poems between The Colossus and Ariel, a subject which critics have not examined closely enough to account for Plath's maturation, including a revision by revision analysis of the making of "Little Fugue" that is an exciting revelation of Plath's compositional methods. He devotes several chapters to Ariel, including one on the Bee poems. His examination of Plath's use of repetition and performance in Ariel is certainly one of Kendall's most stimulating discussions, especially as these devices constitute the linchpins of Plath's most exciting poetry. Finally, he concludes with a fine discussion of the post-Ariel poems written in the last weeks of Plath's life.

Even when I found myself unpersuaded by Kendall's calls on a few poems (e.g., particularly his extended treatment of "The Other" and "Getting There"), I still found myself agreeing with much of his textual analysis. There have not been enough close readings of Plath's poetry, and Kendall's work here is worthy of much appreciation.

[Lorraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, I thought I wasn't going to enjoy this very much for the first chapter or two. The back of the book describes this as a "detailed and dispassionate examination of her poetry" that avoids "preoccupation with her life and death." Predictably, I enjoy this book the most when Kendall is dealing with her life and death which he starts to do more frequently about three chapters in. I'm not a Plath scholar and can't judge the quality of Kendall's criticism, but the book is interesting and well argued.

[Seren · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5*

Had some really interesting ideas in here

[Maria Ch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked Kendall's approach, poetry analysis and criticism. He provided sufficient background information that contributed to a better understanding of the poems and drew thematic and imagery comparisons that were also very interesting to read. Overall a very good account on Plath's poetry that I would reccomend to anyone who was looking for more insight of her work.