Reading (and) the late poems of Sylvia Plath

Abstract

This article offers a reading of Sylvia Plath's late poems by utilizing the psycholinguistic paradigms of Julia Kristeva and Jacques Lacan. It explores the methods by which the poems seek to exploit textual space (silence) in order to suggest an experience that exists beyond the Symbolic. Following Kristeva, I argue this to be a jouissance of a particularly unspeakable kind. I suggest that, rather than seeking to erase silence by providing a definite critical position, the reader must embrace the poems' silence and, in this way, have access to that which is beyond language - the poem's unspoken truth.