Plants in May Sartons Encore文献综述

 2022-09-09 15:50:37

Literature Review on Sartonrsquo;s Works

Literary scholars are beginning to recognize the importance of aging in the creative process and to make significant contributions to gerontological theory. Although relatively few in number, the quality of recent essays and books gives hope for the future legitimacy of the field of literary gerontology.“At the beginning, only a few pioneers, like Kathleen Woodward (1980) and Janice Sokoloff (1987), emphasized aging in their literary articles.”(Wyatt-Brown, Anne M, 1990). Gradually, the situation is beginning to change. We can find more studies on this field. In studying literary gerontology, Sartonrsquo;s work has been gaining increasing recognition. In 1972, the book May Sarton, written by Agnes Sibley, was the first work to study Sartonrsquo;s poetry, novels and other works as a whole and gave an overall assessment of the achievements of Sarton. Brake William edited The First Wave: Women and Poets in America, 1915-1945 in 1987. In the last chapter of the book, William introduced the life and great creations of May Sarton and considered her as the pioneer of poets in the new generation.

Next was about the work called That Great Sanity: Critical Essays on May Sarton, written by Susan Swatzlander and Marilyn R. Mumford. It was the most important work published in 1995. The twelve essays in That Great Sanity edited together to provide theoretical and critical contexts that made a more exhaustive and judicious assessment of Sartonrsquo;s achievements than previous ones. In the “Seeing with Fresh Eyes: A Study of May Sartonrsquo;s Journals by Jeanne Braham, the author thinks “Through rooted in idiosyncratic experience, Sartonrsquo;s journals seek to connect with a wide readership by revealing the need to create order but of chaos, reentry out of withdrawal, health out of illness. Her efforts to define “self” and “values” within a communal context, in part supplied by readerrsquo;s responses, link her journal to current theory exploring womenrsquo;s autobiography. (Braham, 1995:153)Furthermore, the author thinks “Sarton engages in a process of collaboration with the reader” (Braham, 1995:155,). By deliberately inviting the readers in, she engages in crucial conversation with an increasingly responsive readership. (Braham, 1995:164) Sarton casts herself as a character in her own stories, recreating significant life experience, pondering its shape, discovering its outcome, setting her “plot” in motion, discovering its significance in the retelling. In her journal, the process is gradual and cumulative. (Braham, 1995:158) William Blakersquo;s May Sartonrsquo;s Lyric Strategy notes the connection between Sartonrsquo;s spirituality and her lyricism. Blake firstly claimed that the “genesis of a lyric poem” for May Sarton lies in silence. (Drake, 1992: 1) and this silence is the inner region where “the ego finds itself in touch with an infinite spiritual reality”.(Drake, 1992: 1) Meanwhile, Blake points out that aging has influenced Sarton a lot and also gives her some new opinion towards her life. The changing of her body caused by diseases and aging result in depending more on others, which is a big threat to her solitude life. Mary K. DeShazerrsquo;s “Toward Durable Fire”: the Solitary Muse of May Sarton is an essay analyzing Sartonrsquo;s complex treatment of “crucial relationship between the woman poet and her muse” (DeShazer, 1992: 1) as evidenced in the poems of A Durable Fire. DeShazer tried to find the relationship between the poet and her Muse. As Sarton suggests, the aggressive, male side of the female self, the Jungian animus, creates literature. DeShazer thinks Muses in female image can induce the poetrsquo;s productivity and classified the Muses into three groups: the muse as lover and the muse as “demon” (DeShazer, 1992: 3) and in the image of the mother.

In the Sarton Revisited by Elizabeth Evans, the author attempts to place Sarton in the rich cultural milieu of her life, to indicate how serious her early days in the theater were, and to suggest the complicated life she lives. Additionally, the author tries to discuss Sartonrsquo;s work with the genres themselves—memoirs and journals, novels , poetry—concentrating on the singular issues that she has willingly claimed as her own. Furthermore, Elizabeth Evans attempts to distill the themes and to trace the development of the themes throughout Sartonrsquo;s work. Evans points out that “the Sartonrsquo;s papers gives us documentation for many that May Sarton enjoyed, engaged in, profited from, contributed to” (Evans, 1989: 98). Evans also concludes some aspects which are common to all of the journals: Sarton records the date the weather before the journalrsquo;s main body; She notes the visits of neighbors and friends, household chores, shopping, and nature professional life outside the study (poetry reading, lectures, and interviews), her reaction to political and social issues; She writes life about animals, such as dogs, cats, birds and so on; Sarton examines her own psychology, the relations with self and with others, and the guilty and upset because of lack of attention to her work as poet and novelist; She also records details of her own health, especially when illness or accidents frighten her and interrupt her work schedule.

Mark K. Fulkrsquo;s Understanding May Sarton presented Sartonrsquo;s life, experience and literary works comprehensively. Mark stated in the first chapter that one of the main themes of Sartonrsquo; works was solitude, “ suggesting the religious significance of a cloistered life, yet divesting it of orthodox religious meaning, and presenting it as the ideal position for a writer to reflect on her life and world.” (K. Fulk, 1968)

Apart from the study above, aging is another hot topic often discussed by Sartonrsquo;s researchers. In As We Shall Be: May Sarton and Aging, Marlene Springer praises Sartonrsquo;s dignified and sensitive treatment of the elderly in her work. He states that in eighteenth and nineteenth century literary treatment of aging and especially aging women is always negative. But “a modern exception to this pattern is May Sarton, one of the very few writers, especially in our culture, to explore profoundly both the perils and the possibilities confronted by older people; one of the few writers to treat the aged, and particularly older women, with dignity without ignoring the threats of senility, the helplessness of physical decay, the frustrations of waning power.”

Aging and Dying in the novels of May Sarton by Kathleen Gregory Klein is another essay on the theme of aging in Sartonrsquo;s works which considers the role of death and dying in Sartonrsquo;s work. She summarizes that “for most all of Sartonrsquo;s characters to be old is a privilege. They pass through the uncertainties and follies of youth, survive the ambiguities of middle age, and finally find the time to assimilate their knowledge-to achieve wisdom.”(Klein, 1983: 2) She explained “this preference as an understanding that dominating death is impossible; the best alternative is to come to terms with dying, to recognize it as a stage of human growth and maturation.”(Klein, 1983: 5)

From above researches , we can find that most of the scholars who studied May Sartonrsquo; s works concentrated more on her great contributions to the themes of feminism, solitary, aging and dying. Furthermore, some studies have been made on the journals of May Sarton At Seventy by the graduates from Hangzhou Normal University. The journals are analyzed from various aspects.

Fear of dying in May Sartonrsquo;s At Seventy, written by Chen Rongfang, also deals with the theme on dying. This paper aims to study the fear of dying in At Seventy, analyze May Sartonrsquo; s attitude towards dying, and also find out the reasons that facilitate the formation of Sartonrsquo;s thoughts. The author admits that Sarton is fear to dying, and the fear of dying was increasing more and more during the process of aging. But Sarton had never stopped fighting against dying as well as the fear. When confronting dying, Sarton chose to face it directly and accept the natural death. (Chen, 2014:14). The author reaches a conclusion that Sarton was not an old lady who was defeated by this meaningless and uncontrolled subject. On the contrary, she recorded many various activities she did to release the dismal emotion in At Seventy. She balanced the fear and anxieties of dying (an irregular heartbeat, a cancer scare, the death of dear friends) with the celebrations of growing old and its rewards: (Chen, 2015:16)

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