Prof. Aleksandra Nikčević-Batrićević (Faculty of Philology, University of Montenegro) will be delivering a seminar on Anne Sexton’s poetry.
Date and time of event: Thursday, April 15th, at 5-6.15pm via the ZOOM platform.
In order to ensure your online participation in the event, please fill in the form available here.
This event is organized by the “Problematics” Seminar Series (School of English, AUTh)
Event Coordinators: Dr Lydia Roupakia (roupakia@enl.auth.gr) and Dr Effie Botonaki (botonaki@enl.auth.gr)
Event Abstract
In this lecture I will focus on Jo Gill’s study titled Anne Sexton’s Confessional Poetics (Florida, University Press of Florida, 2007) in which Gill, a professor at the University of Exeter (Great Britain), writes about this American poet, mapping an innovative critical discourse, which in this particular context is inspired by the work of Foucault and Deborah Nelson. In search of original themes, during the fifties and the sixties, a group of poets, just as Robert Lowell had done, turned to autobiography, or what could pass as autobiography, because at the time of the development of a society in which racism, urban development and the fear of nuclear disaster existed, an intriguing synthesis of subjective and objective immediacy became an appropriate poetic expression. Apart from Gill’s book, I will mention A New Literary History of America (2012), The Cambridge History of American Literature (1996) and the study of American poetry of the twentieth century written by Richard Gray (1990), in which poets like Wright and Kinnell and other advocates of poetry based on self-examination, are mentioned. I will also focus on Anne Sexton’s attitude towards confessionalism, which Sexton is considered as representing, and on her attitude towards literary creativity in general, at a time which, according to The Cambridge History of American Literature (1996), was characterized by a scepticism. Finally, I will focus on Sexton’s poetry in the context of interpretation of some of her most famous poems.
Short Bio
Prof. Aleksandra Nikčević-Batrićević, PhD, lectures in American Literature and British History and Civilisation. She teaches special literature courses (Feminist literary theory and criticism, American women’s poetry, literature of NY) within the Study Programme for English Language and Literature and teaches English within the Study Programme for History, Geography and Pedagogy (University of Montenegro). She is the author of various academic essays on American and English literature; she is involved in literary theory and criticism and the translation of texts on literature and literary theory. Prof. Aleksandra Nikčević-Batrićević has edited and translated many books that have been published in Montenegro, Greece and the United Kingdom.
