The Poetry of Sharon Olds and Rita Dove

This book is planned to analyze and compare the style of one volume for each of Sharon Olds and Rita Dove, two contemporary American female poets. The book is divided into four chapters: the first one is a theoretical introduction to stylistics and style, the second analyzes Olds’ The Dead and the Living, the third analyzes Dove’s Thomas and Beulah, and the fourth compares and contrasts the styles of both Olds and Dove. The aims of this book are: a. the study of the tropes in the two volumes with attention to metaphor, simile, synecdoche, and the other figures of classical rhetoric which are frequently of great interest for the two poet; b. the study of literary structure and patterns of organization in the two volumes which are related to style. Each poet has won a prestigious prize for her volume: in 1984, Olds won the Lamont Poetry Selection and National Book Critics Circle Award; and in 1987, Dove won the Pulitzer Prize for Thomas and Beulah. Both Olds and Dove belong to the “confessional” literary school of poetry, a trend of poetry that included more confessional, autobiographical material such as sexuality, mental illness, alcoholism, and the difficulties of relationships.