A new tradition? The poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and Adrienne Rich

One of the major problems in interpreting the work of Plath, Sexton and Rich is that of deciding their position within the literary tradition. Through close-textual analysis and with regard to the most important literary influences, the present study examines whether it can be said that the poetry of Plath, Sexton and Rich constitutes a break with the previous tradition. The problem of the relationship between feminism and poetry, which characterizes the work of all three poets, is best resolved in the poetry of Sylvia Plath.