A lacanian reading of Sylvia Plath’s poem "mirror

Abstract EN

This study aims at scrutinizing Sylvia Plath's poem the “Mirror” through the lenses of the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan.

Plath's poem lends itself so readily to be approached from a Lacanian perspective, especially his theory of the mirror stage.

This is so because the poet's life is so replete with the psychological tribulations that seep into her poetic production.

In Lacan and Plath, the mirror or mirroring, both as a concept and as a metaphor, comes full circle through the linguistic outle�ng of the symbolic, psychoanalytically and poetically conceived.

Throughout her poetry, Plath wants to heal herself and transforms her sense of lack into words.

Her poem “Mirror” shows the shi�ing between the Lacanian Mirror stages.

This act of mirroring is responsible for the poet's fictional self being re-generated without recovering the real.