چکیده

Sylvia Plath has confessed that The Bell Jar is an autobiographical work which she wrote in order to get rid of the past. Plath’s narrator, Esther Greenwood, struggles with traumatic memories and psychological disorders, just like Plath herself. Plath writes about Esther’s numerous suicide attempts, hospitalizations, and therapy experiences in this work. Apart from getting professional help, she takes refuge in narrating her life story. Articulating traumatic memories (termed “scriptotherapy” by Suzette Henke) has proven to have therapeutic effects, helping the narrator to overcome those memories. By doing so, the narrator takes part in a dynamic dialogical interaction, during which she makes sense of the past, interprets memories, and (re)constructs her identity. Focusing on this healing process of self-fashioning, this paper studies traumatic memories and turning them into narrative memories. Firstly, the narrator’s traumatic memories are studied based on Cathy Caruth’s and Michael Rothberg’s understandings of trauma, in addition to Bessel Van der Kolk and Onno Van der Hart’s contributions on turning traumatic memories into narrative memories. In addition, theories regarding the therapeutic significance of narration in life stories by Jerome Bruner, James Olney, and Mark Freeman are consulted. Considering the genre of this text, theories regarding women’s autobiographical subjectivity, mainly theories by Sidone Smith and Julia Watson, as well as Leigh Gilmore’s ideas on women’s autobiographical subjectivity, are employed. The main focus of this study is on the narrated “I” (using Smith and Watson’s terminology): the self that the narrator constructs via recollection.

کليدواژه ها

autobiography, memory, trauma, narration, scriptotherapy, Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

کد مقاله / لینک ثابت به این مقاله

برای لینک دهی به این مقاله، می توانید از لینک زیر استفاده نمایید. این لینک همیشه ثابت است :

نحوه استناد به مقاله

در صورتی که می خواهید در اثر پژوهشی خود به این مقاله ارجاع دهید، به سادگی می توانید از عبارت زیر در بخش منابع و مراجع استفاده نمایید:
Raha Athari , 1398 , Breaking Out of The Bell Jar: A Study of Scriptotherapy in Sylvia Plath’s Semi-Autobiography , اولين کنفرانس بين المللي مطالعات زبان انگليسي