The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath. Edited by JO GILL.

Abstract

Contributors to the recently published Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath include established Plath scholars Diane Middlebrook, Susan Van Dyne, Lynda K. Bundtzen, Steven Gould Axelrod, Christina Britzolakis and Tracy Brain, as well as emerging writers in the field of contemporary British and American poetry, Alice Entwhistle, Janet Badia and Jo Gill. Gill's volume thus adroitly combines the views of generalists and specialists; it also includes an essay by Deborah Nelson on an emerging strand in Plath studies: cultural studies. The volume is divided into two parts: the first set of essays tackles contextual issues while the second explores the textual side of Plath's work. Both Diane Middlebrook and Christina Britzolakis offer particularly strong contributions on the latter. Middlebrook's recent work ( Her Husband , 2003) has explored the intertextual relationship between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes; her essay opens up the dialogue between Plath and Hughes and their shared tropes and literary influences. The work of D.H. Lawrence, for example, provides the subtext of Plath's poem, ‘The Rabbit Catcher’; the ‘intermingling’ of both Hughes and Lawrence as sources make this poem of marital cross-wiring even more potent.