ABSTRACT An imitation of the literary styles and modes of expression of the great writers in the
post-World War II was the criterion of success for any male or female writer. The conventions of T.
S Eliot and W. H. Auden influenced the poetics and thought of the younger generation poets. For
example, Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) was an ardent disciple of these conventions in her early
career. She was influenced by the phallogocentric discourse of subject formation. She followed this
man-made discourse to be accepted within the literary circle as a successful woman writer, but she
realized that this discourse didn’t help women in the expression of their female voices. This study
explores the failure of the phallogocentric techniques and modes of writing in the expression of
Rich’s female voice in An Unsaid Word (1951). The study is conducted in the light of Lacanian
Symbolic system of identification. The study concludes that Lacanian system of identification was
behind the distortions of meanings associated with women and the failure of the symbolic order in
the self-expression of Rich’s female character in her poem An Unsaid Word.
تاريخ النشر
07/04/2016
الناشر
International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences
محمد فليح حسن الجنابي | Mohamad Fleih Hassan Aljanabi | 5584