Death Theme in Sylvia Plath's Selected Poems: A New Historical Study

This book explains the death theme which occurs in Sylvia Plath¿s selected poems entitled "Full Fathom Five", "The Colossus", "I am Vertical", "Ariel", "Lady Lazarus" and "Edge". It focuses on the power interest of the poems, especially in alienating the readers from their own life by showing death as a right. This book is conducted by using new historicism approach that relates death to the hidden agenda of the works¿ occurring. It shows that literatures do not reflect the history, but create a version of history in readers¿ minds. In here, the power interest of Plath¿s selected poems can be divided into four different perspectives. There are death as an unacceptable thing, death as an avoidable choice, death as a gate for a rebirth and death as the final solution of all problems in life. In addition to that, by relating death ideas in the selected poems to suicidal issue as the dominant discourse in 1950s to 1960s in the society of United States, it can be proved that death theme in Plath¿s selected poems is truly part of death discourses in its time.