Space As Limitation And Motivation Of Poetic Creativity In Sylvia Plath’s Ariel

Sylvia Plath’s poetry has been a widely discussed subject ever since her death and the posthumous release of her final collection of poems,Ariel,which includes many classic poems such as “Daddy,” “Lady Lazarus,” and the “bee sequence.” The studies of Plath and her poetry at home and abroad usually implement biographical,feminist,and psychoanalytic approaches.This thesis,however,interprets Ariel from the perspective of space theory and analyzes the relationship between the space in Ariel and Plath’s poetic creativity.To explore how the domestic space influences Plath’s creativity,the thesis firstly uses topoanalysis proposed by Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space as a way to analyze the bedrooms and the kitchens in Ariel,where a collision between femininity and creativity seems inevitable.Next,through the lens of Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad,the thesis analyzes the representational space Plath creates in Ariel.Whereas the domestic space in Ariel is passively experienced,the representational space is actively built,where Plath’s creativity goes through a transition from death to rebirth.Then with the help of Foucault’s space-power theory,the thesis discusses how the spatial distribution manipulates Plath’s expressive power of creativity and how Plath gains it through immediate struggle and cultivation of self-critique.The thesis concludes that the domestic space limits Plath’s poetic creativity,whereas the representational space motivates it.Besides,through the process of writing,Plath cultivates self-critique to resist the surveillance of spatial distribution and creates an image of “survivor poet” at the end of Ariel.