The Haunting of Sylvia Plath (Convergences)
As Rose demonstrates in her ambitious and original book, Plath has become one who 'haunts our culture'...Rose both reads Plath's writing for its multiplicity, its ghostly subtexts of ambiguity and fantasy, and discusses the ways in which she has become the object of critical fantasies and debates about femininity, violence and contemporary culture...Her goal is to repair both the blatant and the subtle editorial cuts made in the body of Plath's writing, to restore the poet's sexuality, anger and left-wing politics to the historical and aesthetic record...Rose's book is surely one of the most illuminating to date about the contradictions and the haunting power of the Plath legacy. (Elaine ShowalterLondon Review of Books)In her powerful new book, Jacqueline Rose refuses the temptation to lay claim to the 'truth' about Plath's work; in her illuminating readings of individual poems, she restores their ambiguity and sexuality, striving to 'stay with that anxiety and not resolve it.' (Voice Literary Supplement)Working at the source, [Rose] transforms an existential dilemma (which is how most people read the Plath life and work) into a problem of knowledge. In a stroke, she redefines the debate...Her book is thrilling. (Manchester Guardian)The Haunting of Sylvia Plathgives us a new Sylvia Plath, even more troubling and contradictory and compelling than the one we thought we knew, and more important for the ways we understand literature and its place in twentieth-century culture. Rose's book--original, deftly-argued, and bold both in its perceptions and in the materials it chooses to include--will render most existing criticism of Plath obsolete. (Stacy Carson HubbardAmerican Literature)