confessional poetry

The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature | 2003 | 657 words | Copyright

confessional poetry, a term principally applied to the self-revealing style of writing and use of intimate subject matter adopted and pioneered in America by R. Lowell (Life Studies, 1959): other writers in the tradition have included Berryman, Sexton, and Plath. A new wave of confessional writing in prose occurred in the 1980s and 1990s when a vogue for autobiographical material, family history, and frank memoirs coincided in Britain with a new sense of male interest in domestic and psychological matters hitherto regarded as predominantly female terrain: this resulted in ‘New Man’ writing by Blake Morrison, Nick Hornby and others.

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MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "confessional poetry." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 29 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "confessional poetry." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (May 29, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-confessionalpoetry.html

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "confessional poetry." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved May 29, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-confessionalpoetry.html

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