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<p>This article investigates the aestheticisation of death in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Edge” in relation to other poems by her and marginally by Seamus Heaney and Charles Baudelaire, and to the short story “The Oval Portrait” by Edgar Allan Poe. Such aestheticisation, I contend, partakes of the spirit of the anatomical illustration of early modern tracts such as the joint volume by Giulio Casserio and Adriaan van de Spiegel, and of western culture’s necrophilia.</p>
</abstract>

This article investigates the aestheticisation of death in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Edge” in relation to other poems by her and marginally by Seamus Heaney and Charles Baudelaire, and to the short story “The Oval Portrait” by Edgar Allan Poe. Such aestheticisation, I contend, partakes of the spirit of the anatomical illustration of early modern tracts such as the joint volume by Giulio Casserio and Adriaan van de Spiegel, and of western culture’s necrophilia.

PETALS: The Aestheticisation of Death in Sylvia Plath’s “Edge” and in the Illustrations of Adriaan van de Spiegel’s <italic>Frucht in Mutter Leibe</italic>

American, British and Canadian Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

PETALS: The Aestheticisation of Death in Sylvia Plath’s “Edge” and in the Illustrations of Adriaan van de Spiegel’s 

This article investigates the aestheticisation of death in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Edge” in relation to other poems by her and marginally by Seamus Heaney and...

PETALS: The Aestheticisation of Death in Sylvia Plath’s “Edge” and in the Illustrations of Adriaan van de Spiegel’s Frucht in Mutter Leibe

Published Online: Jan 26, 2024

Page range: 42 - 57

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/abcsj-2023-0006

Keywords
Sylvia Plath, “Edge”, “The Munich Mannequins”, “The Oval Portrait” (E. A. Poe), perfection, petals, death, aestheticisation, anatomical illustration, Adriaan van de Spiegel

© 2023 Estella Ciobanu, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

PETALS: The Aestheticisation of Death in Sylvia Plath’s “Edge” and in the Illustrations of Adriaan van de Spiegel’s Frucht in Mutter Leibe

Published Online: Jan 26, 2024

Page range: 42 - 57

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/abcsj-2023-0006

KeywordsSylvia Plath, “Edge”, “The Munich Mannequins”, “The Oval Portrait” (E. A. Poe), perfection, petals, death, aestheticisation, anatomical illustration, Adriaan van de Spiegel

© 2023 Estella Ciobanu, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
Sylvia Plath, “Edge”, “The Munich Mannequins”, “The Oval Portrait” (E. A. Poe), perfection, petals, death, aestheticisation, anatomical illustration, Adriaan van de Spiegel