Bloom's Major Poets - Sylvia Plath - Comprehensive Research and Study Guide (97p) [Inua].pdf

Title: Sylvia Plath: Comprehensive Research and Study Guide
Author: Harold Bloom
Series: Bloom's Major Poets
Library Binding: 96 pages
Publisher: Chelsea House Pub (L) (November 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0791059359
ISBN-13: 978-0791059357

Description:
-- User's guide
-- A comprehensive biography of the poet
-- Detailed thematic analysis of each poem
-- Extracts from major critical essays that discuss important aspects of each poem
-- A complete bibliography of the writer's poetic works
-- A list of critical works about the poet and his works
-- An index of themes and ideas in the author's work

Grade 10 Up-In each of these volumes, five poems are represented in critical essays by literary analysts both past and contemporary. Sylvia Plath features "The Colossus," "The Arrival of the Bee Box," "Daddy," "Ariel," and "Lady Lazarus." The main texts are prefaced by brief but informative biographies of the poets and conclude with bibliographies of works by and about them as well as indexes of important themes and ideas from the poems. Each volume is divided into sections, one for each poem, and each section begins with Bloom's thematic analysis of the work. This information, given in a straightforward style, will be helpful to students. Because the essays are written by scholars, however, the language is often dense and hard to grasp for all but the most advanced high-school literature students. With their academic approach and language, these research and study guides would be best used in school libraries that support intensive literary research on the precollege or Advanced Placement level.

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Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge, before receiving acclaim as a poet and writer. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956; they lived together in the United States and then England, and had two children, Frieda and Nicholas. Plath suffered from depression for much of her adult life, and in 1963 she committed suicide. Controversy continues to surround the events of her life and death, as well as her writing and legacy.

Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for her two published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel. In 1982, she won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for The Collected Poems. She also wrote The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her death.