"Self", "Confession" And "Autobiograghy": A Study Of Sexton’s "Poetic Truth"

Anne Sexton, as an original member of Confessional Poets, is also a great innovator who contributed a lot to American modern poetry. Her view of "Poetic Truth" represents the most important thoughts in her works. This dissertation focuses especially on elements of this view of "Poetic Truth":"self", "confession" and "autobiography", making these three key points fully examined in her poems in the perspectives respectively of generation contexts, poetic themes and narrative forms.The present dissertation consists of five parts.The introduction begins with a review of Sexton’s position in modern poetic history and a general survey of four sections of her writings. Then it explains the relationship between "self", "confession" and "autobiography" as well as the roles these three play in Sexton’s works. As for the part of literature reviews, this dissertation emphasizes the western studies, bringing out all the important findings about these three key points, which, as the author of this dissertation believes, should be studied further in the very structure of "Poetic Truth".Chapter Two studies the concept of "self", situating it in a certain background while figuring out the generation contexts of Sexton’s poetry. On the one hand, writing about self was permitted by the American culture after the WWII, especially when individualism and narcissism were so popular and rock and roll music, black humor novels and feminism were having such significant impact. On the other hand, the element of "self" can be recognized as a vital link between the confessionals and Whitman, between confessionals and the symbolist poets.Chapter Three looks into the idea of "confession", exploring the subject matters of trauma and taboos in Sexton’s poems, such as suicidal depression, mental breakdown, adultery, abortion, and masturbation. In point of fact, the thematic construction of Sexton’s can be divided into three different domains:1, the family. In her poems, Sexton was retelling her familial stories, emphasizing the relationships among family members to work through her childhood emotional problems; 2, the female body, as is more private than the one before. By writing appalling sensual and sexual experiences in her memory, Sexton also tried to reconstruct the truth as well as self-identity cognition; 3, the death. As Sexton believes death is the ultimate way to express and explore the truth about oneself, she devoted her writings to the suicidal wish and the final commitment.Chapter Four, then, proceeds to inquire about the element of "autobiography", taking the autobiographical writings and the non-autobiographical narratives as the most distinctive nature and form of Sexton’s poetry. Thus, this chapter is divided into three sections:1, the autobiographical writings. By interweaving the facts with her potential consciousness, the narrator normally represents the poet herself; 2, the non-autobiographical and masked writings. That is to say, the narrative "I" is not always the poet Sexton but someone else, which can be an imaginative experience; 3, the strategies of self-referential writings. In this kind of writing, the view of first person was no more maintained. Instead, the author was transferred into any other personas. The book Transformation can be seen as an example.Finally, the conclusion discusses the typical dimension of Sexton’s "Poetic Truth" and its values. By doing so, this dissertation proposes that Sexton is essential as an atomic individual poet. Also, in the aspect of Cultural Studies, this research exposes the relationship between Sexton’s "Poetic Truth" and current ear of confession writings.