Языковое воплощение поэтического образа на материале американской поэзии ХХ века

Краткая биография поэтов

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) is an American poet who belongs to the founders of the confessional poetry. She is best known for the novel ―The Bell Jar‖ and poetry collections ―The Colossus‖ and ―Ariel‖ which contain personal experiences of the author, the motifs of self-destruction and express her personal emotional state. These are the specific features of the genre to which S. Plath is ascribed.
The confessional poetry‘s peculiarities are the following:

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  Intimate themes which touch upon some taboo topics such as disappointment in love, depression, suicide, alcoholism, sex, etc.;
  
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  Directness in describing the above mentioned problematic themes;
  
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  Emotional resonance of the persona;
  
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  The first-person mode of narration;
  
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  Explicit biographical content.
  

Thus, Plath‘s poems are typical of biographical facts and strong emotional components such as ambiguous feelings and neurotic fears. Themes common for Plath‘s poetry are connected with the situation of women in the mid-20^th-century America, family, nature and death. It is notable that they are related to some periods of her own living. After Ted Hughes – Sylvia‘s husband – leaves her for another woman in 1962, she falls into a deep depression. When struggling with her mental disease, she creates The Bell Jar (1963) which is actually published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. She also writes the poems that would make up the collection Ariel (1965), which was released after her death. Sylvia Plath committed suicide on February 11, 1963. The works we are going to study and analyze are written in the last months of Plath‘s living, they can be considered key in her creative heritage.
The poem ―Ariel‖ is included into the collection of poems entitled ―Ariel‖ that contains 43 poems and is published 2 years after Plath‘s death. It is written on October 27, 1962, at the 30^th birthday of the writer. This period is related to the strained relationship of Sylvia with her husband who has already had a mistress by this time. Nevertheless, it seems to be a heyday of the poet‘s creative activities: indeed, she has created 26 poems for a short period of time.