Anne Sexton의 Love Poems에서 드러나는 무의식적 효과: Émile Durkheim의 ‘Anomie’와 Lacan의 ‘Signifiant’

Abstract

Anne Sexton is classified as one of the Confessionary Poets – such as Robert Lowell, W. D. Snodgrass, and Sylvia Plath. Unlike conventional poetry that emphasizes universality of literature, Confessionary Poetry vibrantly exudes the poet's personal voice, usually hidden behind the character. The appearance of Confessionary Poets shows a new direction of American Poetry, although somewhat radical an experiment after the war. Within such societal ambience, the appearance of Confessionary Poets was inevitable. They tried to recover their subjectivity and literary achievements by exploring personal emotions that were repressed under affluent society. In this paper, I will examine Anne Sexton - who ended her life by committing a suicide – along with her works. It will highlight her relationship with the society in an ontological dimension. In addition, the therapeutic power poetry has will also be illustrated. I will first examine how Anne Sexton resists the social control through Emile Durkheim's ‘anomic suicide’ from Le Suicide that covers suicide as collective phenomena instead of personal matter. Second, I will discuss over the matter of subjectivity by Jacques Lacan's “logic of signifiant,” “division of subjectivity.” Lastly, the behavior or writing poetry and its therapeutic significance will be examined in times of a modern “anomic” society. The psychoanalytic discourse herefrom is not a physical approach, but a moral one that shows the relationship between a subject and an anti-subject, individual and society, and the poet and the main character of its poem.