To Be Or Not To Be

Sylvia Plath, whose poetic life and life poetics have once been the focus of literary criticism, should be unquestionably regarded as a most intelligent and ingenious poet among the Confessional Poets from 1950s to 1960s. What makes her outstanding lies in her combination of self-confession, selfhood and suicide, which has advanced the Confessional Poetry, inaugurated by Robert Lowell, to its utmost degree and fulfilled the wish of "howling from soul" in Yeats' anticipation of the 20th poetry. In her eyes, only such a voice is the true voice of human beings who exist on the earth. So turbulent is her heart that she composes her poems with her own life and forges the Black Art with her own suicide. The consciousness of "to be or not to be", which vibrates in her poems, then becomes a key to the interpretation of her poetic art for us.This thesis attempts to probe into Plath's life outlook with the Phenomenological approach supplemented by other literary criticisms such as Feminism and Psychoanalysis. As the poet's subjective creative intuition and objective life experience are fully merged in her poems biblically and biographically, we could discover and appreciate her strong contemplation on life consciousness. The Introduction of the thesis surveys the background in which the Confessional Movement came into being and discusses the clear-cut era-bound characteristics and personal innovation of Plath's poems. The first part of the thesis succinctly traces the evolution of Sylvia's life outlook, from its early formation to its transitional development, and to its final maturity by way of analyzing of her representative poems in each of her life period. The second part expands the study of her life outlook reflected in her poems by examining the different states of life—living and suicide, rebirth and struggling (mainly anguish and madness are concerned). The third part classifies and interprets the predominant images that appear in her poems for they stand for the various states of life, which include sea, moon, tree, bee and color. The conclusion is that Plath's life outlook is complicated with its conflict between life and...