White Women Writing White - H.D., Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, and Whiteness

Just as the cultural background of readers shapes how they respond to texts, the context in which writers live shapes what they write. When a context is dominant within a culture, the effects of that context upon an author may be taken for granted and thus overlooked. Race is a powerful factor in shaping literary works. Literature by black writers, for example, often reflects the experiences of African Americans. At the same time, though perhaps less obviously, literature by white writers may similarly reflect the experience of being white. This book argues that H.D., Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath wrote from an unproclaimed dominant white perspective that becomes evident in their poetry.

Loosely delineated, writing white constitutes writing authored from an acknowledged or unacknowledged white perspective; writing that implies or explicitly delivers the concept of whiteness to a text; writing that remains unconcerned with white racial politics internal and external to the text; and writing that uses the word white to maintain ideological systems of mastery and dichotomy. This book examines numerous poems in terms of whiteness. Each chapter places one poet in the larger context of historical and cultural racial events prevalent during the time of her writing and explores the particular poems created and published during that period.

List of contents

Introduction: "A Poetics of Presumption"
"Minute Granules on a White Thread": H.D. and a Masterful Whiteness
"A Sort of Inheritance; White": Elizabeth Bishop and Selective Self-Reflection on Whiteness
"White: It Is a Complexion of the Mind": The Enactment of Whiteness in Sylvia Plath's Poetry
Conclusion
Works Cited
Index

About the author

RENÉE R. CURRY is Associate Professor of Literature and Writing at California State University, San Marcos. She is the editor of Perspectives on Woody Allen (1996) and coeditor of States of Rage: Emotional Eruption, Violence, and Social Change (1996).

Product details

• Authors: Renee R. Curry, Curry Renee R.
• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: ages 7 to 17
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.05.2000
• EAN: 9780313310195
• ISBN: 978-0-313-31019-5
• No. of pages: 200
• Weight: 425 g
• Series: Contributions in Women's Studies
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; USA, Ethnic Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies, LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Women Authors, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, American English, Literary studies: poetry & poets, United States of America, USA, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Gender studies: women, Gender studies: women and girls, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Women's Studies, Literary studies: poetry and poets, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Cultural & Ethnic Studies / General