Synopses & Reviews
"This is the best book on American women poets I have yet seen."
Synopsis
"This is the best book on American women poets I have yet seen." --American Literature
"... sophisticated and eloquently argued analysis of a female counter-sublime... " --Sandra Gilbert
"... strong readings of Dickinson and Moore and... a vital polemic on behalf of feminist criticism." --Harold Bloom
"This brilliant re-evaluation of major American women poets will be indispensable reading... A stunning and a magisterial achievement." --Susan Gubar
"... a powerful thesis... a book that is as rich as it is dense in meaning." --The Women's Review of Books
Employing current work in gender studies, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism and focusing on Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, and Adrienne Rich, the author delineates an alternative tradition of American women poets, what Diehl calls the American Counter-Sublime.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [169]-193) and index.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. From Emerson to Whitman: Engendering the Sublime
2. Another Way to See: Dickinson and the Counter-Sublime
3. Dickinson, Moore, and the Poetics of Deflection
4. Marianne Moore: Toward an Engendered Sublime
5. The Piercing, Melting Word: Moore's Octopus
6. Bishop's Sexual Poetics
7. Plath's Bodily Ego: Restaging the Sublime
8. Of Woman Born: Adrienne Rich and the Feminist Sublime
Notes
Index