Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plathen 160B1: Fall 2015

Anne Sexton and Sylvia PlathEN 160B1: Fall 2015

Dawn Skorczewski ()Phone: 802 745 7776

Office: Rabb 143Hours: T/Th 2-3 and by appt

Course Description: The lives and works of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath stand among the most remarkable and disturbing of the second half of the 20th century. In less than ten short years, Anne Sexton rose from a position of depressed suburban housewife and mental patient to winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Sylvia Plath, though more educated and less famous before her suicide than Sexton, was named one of Timemagazine’s 100 Entertainers of the Century in 1998. Both writers remain central to the canon of 20th century literature. Sexton purportedly called herself “the only Confessional poet, while Plath’s Ariel, written months before her suicide in 1963, still occupies a prominent space in the contemporary American poetic landscape.

Sexton and Plath raise difficult questions regarding the relationships between the personal and the poetic voices. We will trace the very different trajectories of Plath’s and Sexton’s careers and attempt to identify and explore their poetic achievements. We will read Plath’s and Sexton’s poems, prose, and journals. We will also examine work by contemporaries such as John Berryman and Robert Lowell, and along the way familiarize ourselves with what came to be called “confessional” poetry.

Finally, we will also approach Plath’s and Sexton’s writing in relation to contemporary notions of gender and sexuality. Sexton’s husband Kayo frequently accused her of abandoning her family for her poet friends. Plath’s husband, English Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, famously “edited” Plath’s posthumous prose and collected poems, and threw away her final journals. We’ll also think forward to “neoconfessionals” such as Sharon Olds and Marie Howe. Our work together will sharpen your skills in literary, critical, and cultural analysis, as well as hone your abilities to write and speak professionally.

Learning objectives:

• Students will gain a basic understanding of the lives and works of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, as well as their contemporaries.
• Students will analyze poetic texts in comparison to other genres, including fiction, prose, and film.
• Students will gain background knowledge about the many versions of the idea of Confessional Poetry.
• Students will be encouraged to make connections across the works of Sexton and Plath to make broader claims about gender, genre, and poetic voice.
• Memorization projects will develop students’ oral presentation skills.
• The individual essays that the students will write will challenge students to write coherently and intelligibly about the lives and poetry of Sexton and Plath.
• Research in the Sexton and Plath archives will invite students to participate in the ongoing international conversations about the legacy of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath and the responsibilities of those who choose to study and memorialize their lives and works.

Required Texts:

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar. New York: Harper Perennial, 2006; The Collected Poems. New York: Harper Perennial, 1981; The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. New York: Anchor, 2000; Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters

Anne Sexton, Complete Poems, Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1987; Anne Sexton: A Biography Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1991.

You will be assigned one of these Plath biographies: Linda Wagner-Martin (Sylvia Plath: A Biography), Paul Alexander (Rough Magic), Carl Rollyson (American Isis),

Additional essays, poems, stories, and critical matter to be disseminated through latte.

Academic Dishonesty:Any form of plagiarism or academic dishonesty—no matter the assignment or its relation to the final grade—will result in an automatic course grade of F.

Success in this 4 credit hour course is based on the expectation that students will spend a minimum of 9 hours of study time per week in preparation for class (readings, papers, discussion sections, preparation for exams, etc.)

Course Requirements:

Daily Attendance + posts 5%--10 meaningful discussion posts each

5 Memorizations 25%--you will write these out in class (5 pts ea)

Plath Biography Panel Discussion 15%--3 page summary due the week before

Memorizations:To strengthen your sense of the ways in which poetry sounds, you will memorize at least 50 lines total of Sexton’s and/or Plath’s poetry throughout the semester. These memorizations occur five times on the syllabus, each accounting for roughly ten lines. You will be asked in class to transcribe perfectly from memory the predetermined lines, including correct spelling, punctuation, and lineation. Total of 5 points for each.

Panel Discussions:Once during the semester, you will construct a 750 word (three pages in MLA format) summary of a biography on Plath or a memoir by Linda Sexton, Anne Sexton’s daughter. You will discuss this work on a panel with one or two other class members. You may divide the biography into pieces if you prefer to write about a portion of it.

Cary Nelson’s Modern American Poetry website ( offers some initial explorations into the critical discourse surrounding Sexton and Plath.

Discussion Posts:In order to strengthen both your own ideas and writing, and to foster a sense of shared responsibility and collaboration, you will help construct a vibrant online discussion group (through latte). Each of you must post at least ten meaningful messages during the semester. They may take the form of either an original post or a response to a classmate’s query. I will keep track of your number as the semester progresses, and will also share many “meaningful” posts along the way. In the interests of fostering dynamic and informed discussions in class, I encourage you to post your messages before the relevant class period. That way, your classmates and I will have time to digest and perhaps even respond to your comments, and to use them as valuable starting points in class. I also, however, understand that our class time may often inspire you to look at the text in a different way, thus prompting a “post-class post,” which is also fine. Stay attentive to the discussion board, and read it often.

Discussion posts will, at least initially, revolve around the identification of valuable phenomena within the texts at hand. Inevitably, they will lead us to pose specific theoretical questions and responses regarding the potential literary, historical, and cultural meanings behind them, which will be our second avenue of exploration. Finally, this forum will also be of enormous value while you construct your various critical-writing projects. Think of the ongoing discussions as extensions of our classroom—a collaborative space in which to share your ideas and to consult your peers for aid and encouragement. I will post discussion prompts and encourage you to do likewise. To access these, simply go to the “Discussions” link on our Latte site. Best advice: post often and early. I’ll keep a running tally of your number, but I hope that all of you will enter many more posts than the minimum requirement of ten.

Critical Writing Projects:Seventy-five percent of your overall grade will come from the four critical-writing projects, each more rigorous than the last, and each building on skills from the previous project. I will distribute more information on these projects as we approach them in the schedule. All will follow strict MLA (Modern Language Association) guidelines, the final of which will be a research-based paper of at least ten pages.

Attendance:Your regular participation in this class is a vital part of its success. You will be penalized for each class miss after one absence. Being more than five minutes late = absent.

Course Reading Schedule:We will not cover all of the poetry readings in each class. Rather, we will usually select a few poems to analyze during class time, thereby leaving the majority of poems for you to consider later in your writing projects. I will inevitably supplement your reading with further criticism, and encourage you to share with the class any helpful information that you discover.

Course Schedule: