The biographical approach to litera...

The biographical approach to literature has an antique aura about it these days; certain circles disapprove utterly it as unfashionable. Ever since Foucault announced "the death of the author," custodians of literary history and criticism have taken careful pains to separate the art from the life of the artist. on the other hand in the case of Sylvia Plath it would take an extraordinary muscle to peer these two entities apart; here the art and the life entwine to form the same indivisible whole. A chain of biographical marked occurrences - a troubled marriage, separation, and divorce; a feverish period of poesy ...