Shattering Silence: Plath and Sexton’s Radical Poetics of the Sublime and Grotesque

Abstract

This study examines how Sylvia Plath and Anne Seton shattered literary and cultural silence through their radical reworking  of the sublime  and grotesque to articulate female experiences in mid-20th-century America. Drawing on theorists such as Edmund Burke, Immanuel  Kant,Julia Kristeva,  and Mikhail Bakhtin. The analysis explores how these poets transformed  deeply personal trauma intoa feminist acts of resistance. Through close readings of over twenty  poems, alongside archival materials,  this paper  reveals  how Plath's metaphysical sublime in Ariel and Saxten's grotesque distortions in Transformations  subvert traditional  narratives of femininity,  mental illness,  and the female body. Both poets challenge  patriarchal norms  through the deliberate repurposing  of male-dominated aesthetics.