Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Pierce, Catherine.

Committee Member

Kardos, Michael P.

Committee Member

Lyons, Richard.

Date of Degree

5-6-2017

Original embargo terms

MSU Only Indefinitely

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Campus Access Only

Major

English

Degree Name

Master of Arts

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of English

Abstract

The poems in this thesis address ideas of transition and movement, and are preceded by a critical introduction on two collections of poetry that also address some of these concepts. The poetry in Maggie Smith’s The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison and in Anne Sexton’s Transformations make old tales worth reading again, by taking the structured narratives of these familiar stories and making them darker, more thrilling, and more personal. Smith and Sexton use fairy tale tropes in their collections as a way to identify and cope with some of the more difficult human problems we would rather avoid, such as death, family, and self-harm. I explore how these collections use the darker sides and lesser characters of these familiar stories—elements that are often overlooked in contemporary versions of legends, myths, and fairy tales—to illustrate these difficult human problems in their various poems.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/16906

Comments

fairy tales||families||parenting||abuse||Smith||Sexton||poetry||revision||stories

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