"EVERY WOMAN ADORES A FASCIST": MALADIVE ADDICTIONS IN ENGLISH WOMEN’S POETRY Cover Image

"EVERY WOMAN ADORES A FASCIST": MALADIVE ADDICTIONS IN ENGLISH WOMEN’S POETRY
"EVERY WOMAN ADORES A FASCIST": MALADIVE ADDICTIONS IN ENGLISH WOMEN’S POETRY

Author(s): Elena Nistor
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti
Keywords: feminine writing; identity; alterity; language; voice

Summary/Abstract: Contemporary English feminine lyricism refuses the over-confidence of any kind of authority and proclaims a new rhetoric of the individual since emphasis shifts towards the genuine, the authentic, the trustworthy, as an ever more proficient aesthetics emphasizes the significant private and intimate, meaningful feminine experience. In long-unwritten personal histories, negations become part of bold statements that propose, among others, a new perspective on family relationships, particularly with the father. Protest and rebellion against the enforcing of authority displayed in fractured family relationships, as well as subversive ways of counteracting it, generate a sense of unease and disquiet initiated by Sylvia Plath in dramatic poems of psychic purgation. Systematic recollections of the self result in dispossession through direct confrontation with the everyday demons produced by imagination, in a potentially curative attempt to overcome victimisation and self-disintegration. Among other contemporary women poets, Selima Hill, Fleur Adcock, and Stevie Smith have invented personae in their poems to categorise and manipulate feelings in name-calling and broken idols through disruptive discourses, trying to retrieve identity in a ritual of survival and promote a secured, authentic self capable of integrating into the recognition and acceptance of others.

  • Issue Year: 2008
  • Issue No: 02
  • Page Range: 158-165
  • Page Count: 8
  • Language: English