The Terror Poetry in the Work by Paul Éluard, Julia Hartwig and Anne Sexton

Abstract

In analysing the complex aesthetic relationship established between the poetics of Gothic and the poetics of Surrealism, based on the experiences of the crisis of myth, of the formless, and consequently, of terror and horror, the paper proposes the reading of some poems that stage this difficult articulation. Paul Éluard, Julia Hartwig and Anne Sexton seek, in fact, the procedures capable of representing the painful subjective helplessness, which also concerns the issue of gender limits. The regime of negativity characteristic of Gothic poetics leads to the refusal of the search for new myths and new images of female creativity, typical of romanticism. By valuing the representation of space, Gothic prepared the path of criticism, poetic and feminist, of the discourses of psychoanalysis and phenomenology.