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Confessional poetry or 'Confessionalism' is a style of poetry that emerged in the United States during the 1950s. It has been described as poetry "of the personal," focusing on extreme moments of individual experience, the psyche, and personal trauma, including previously taboo matter such as mental illness, sexuality, and suicide, often set in relation to broader social themes.〔I. Ousby ed. ''The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'' (1995) p. 199〕 It is sometimes also classified as Postmodernism.〔(Postmodernist Poetry: a Movement or an Indulgence? ), by Peter R. Jacoby〕 The school of "Confessional Poetry" was associated with several poets who redefined American poetry in the '50s and '60s, including Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsberg, and W. D. Snodgrass.〔(W.D. Snodgrass ), Poet biography; Poets.org〕〔I. Ousby ed. ''The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'' (1995) p. 199〕 ==''Life Studies'' and the emergence of Confessionalism== In 1959 M. L. Rosenthal first used the term "confessional" in a review of Robert Lowell's ''Life Studies'' entitled "Poetry as Confession",〔''The Nation'', September 19, 1959), reprinted in Rosenthal 1991, pp. 109 – 112. Rosenthal somewhat reworked the review into an essay "Robert Lowell and the Poetry of Confession" in his 1960 book ''The Modern Poets''〕 Rosenthal differentiated the confessional approach from other modes of lyric poetry by way of its use of confidences that (Rosenthal said) went “beyond customary bounds of reticence or personal embarrassment”.〔Ian Hamilton, 'A Biographer's Msgivings', collected in ''Walking Possession, Essays & Reviews 1968 – 1993'', Addison-Wesley, 1994. ISBN 0-201-48397-1〕 Rosenthal notes that in earlier tendencies towards the confessional there was typically a "mask" that hid the poet's "actual face", and states that “Lowell removes the mask. His speaker is unequivocally himself, and it is hard not to think of ''Life Studies'' as a series of personal confidences, rather shameful, that one is honor-bound not to reveal”.〔Rosenthal, 1959.〕 In a review of the book in ''The Kenyon Review'', John Thompson wrote, "For these poems, the question of propriety no longer exists. They have made a conquest: what they have won is a major expansion of the territory of poetry."〔Thompson, John, "Two Poets", ''Kenyon Review'' 21 (1959), pp. 482 – 490.〕 There were however clear moves towards the "confessional" mode before the publication of ''Life Studies''. Delmore Schwartz's confessional long poem ''Genesis'' had been published in 1943; and John Berryman had written a sonnet sequence in 1947 about an adulterous affair he'd had with a woman named Chris while he was married to his first wife, Eileen (however, since publishing the sonnets would have revealed the affair to his wife, Berryman didn't actually publish the sequence, titled ''Berryman's Sonnets'', until 1967, after he divorced from his first wife).〔Kirsch, p. 2, makes this observation in his reassessment of the historical context of ''Life Studies''.〕〔Mariani, Paul. ''Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman''.〕 Snodgrass' ''Heart's Needle'', in which he writes about the aftermath of his divorce, also preceded ''Life Studies''. ''Life Studies'' was nonetheless the first book in the confessional mode that captured the reading public's attention and the first to officially be labeled "confessional." Most notably "confessional" were the poems in the final section of ''Life Studies'' in which Lowell alludes to his struggles with mental illness and his experiences in a mental hospital. Plath remarked upon the influence of these types of poems from ''Life Studies'' in an interview in which she stated, "I've been very excited by what I feel is the new breakthrough that came with, say, Robert Lowell's ''Life Studies'', this intense breakthrough into very serious, very personal, emotional experience which I feel has been partly taboo. Robert Lowell's poems about his experience in a mental hospital, for example, interested me very much."〔Orr, Peter, ed. "The Poet Speaks - Interviews with Contemporary Poets Conducted by Hilary Morrish, Peter Orr, John Press and Ian Scott-Kilvert". London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966.()〕 A. Alvarez however considered that some poems in ''Life Studies'' seemed “more compulsively concerned with the processes of psychoanalysis than with those of poetry”;〔A. Alvarez, ''The New Poetry'' (1978) p. 29〕 while conversely Michael Hofmann saw the verbal merit of Lowell's work only diminished by emphasis on “what I would call the C-word, 'Confessionalism'”.〔M. Hofmann, ''Robert Lowell'' (2006) p. xiv〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Confessional poetry」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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