This thesis examines the intertextual and dialogic interlacement of the poetic voices of the American poetess Sylvia Plath and the British poet Ted Hughes as manifested in the poetry (as well as some other forms of literary works) that was mutually inspired. Their creative and love partnership inspired and generated numerous literary works in a unique way: by way of call and response, this being a way of creation when a prior literary work incites the origin of the latter and interacts with it. To shed light on the theoretical background which defines the reciprocal communication of the poems and other literary texts written by various authors within the medium of literature (as it happens in the case of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes), I present the origins and development of a theory of intertextuality according to Juvan as well as the theory of influence, with a particular emphasis on Bloom's theory of poetic influence. The crucial theoretical anchorage of this thesis is Bahtin's theory of dialogism. Bahtin argues that the word is not limited to the mere representation of extralinguistic reality; instead, he lucidly defines the word as the bilateral act between the self and the other. Because of its dialogic disposition and openness towards the word of the other - which for Bahtin represents conditio sine qua non of the literary writing - the word can return to its own essence, now enriched by the foreign context, while once more opening itself outwards in the very next moment. Bahtin's precious contribution is that by developing his concept of dialogism he was the first to point out that every utterance is inevitably entering into the inner (psycholinguistic) and outer (sociolinguistic) interaction with semantic, valuational, formal-stylistic and sociocultural qualities of other utterances. The above-mentioned theories serve as a starting point to examine the reciprocally inspired literary works of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. The second part of the thesis focuses on recapitulating the autobiographical elements of both authors and juxtaposes them in such a way that out of the units, strung on a string of life, the reader can discern the quintessence of the weaving of reality and fiction that so typically characterizes Plath's and Hughes' writing - first in some of the literary pieces written independently, then through intertwined writing by way of call and response. Following Middlebrook%s suggestion, the works that spring from the mutually inspired literary creation are divided in three development stages: courtship poems, marriage poems, separation poems. With the sensitive and at the same time sensible gesture the thesis tries to uncover thus far unlifted veils of the literary universes of one of the greatest American poetesses of the 20th century and the British poet laureate - a duo that is indissoluble in many of the works that flowed from their heavenly creative partnership.
|
