Editing Confessional writing (section)

== Criticisms of the confessional writing genre ==
[[File:Michel Foucault 1974 Brasil.jpg|thumb|[[Michel Foucault]] in 1974. Foucault theorised on confession as an oppressive, hegemonic condition]]
A highly influential movement, confessional writing has been critiqued as narcissistic, self-indulgent, as well as a violation of the privacy of the private individuals which confessional writers depict.<ref name=":8" /><ref name=":12" /> Owing to the exclusively heterosexual and upper-class<ref name=":0" /> [[White Anglo-Saxon Protestants|White Anglo-Saxon Protestantism]] which characterises many of the early confessional writers, such as Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath, the mode has been critiqued as solipsistic, 'classist, self assured, and elusive,'<ref>{{Citation |last=Spiegelman |first=Willard |title=The Achievement of Robert Lowell (2005) |date=29 December 2008 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195368130.003.0018 |work=Imaginative Transcripts |pages=254–284 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195368130.003.0018 |isbn=978-0-19-536813-0 |access-date=2022-05-18|url-access=subscription }}</ref> as well as lacking diverse social and cultural perspectives.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bonasera |first=Carmen |date=9 July 2021 |title=Bodies and self-disclosure in American female confessional poetry |url=https://ejlw.eu/article/view/37638 |journal=European Journal of Life Writing |volume=10 |pages=SV33–SV56 |doi=10.21827/ejlw.10.37638 |s2cid=237833276 |issn=2211-243X|hdl=11585/917652 |hdl-access=free }}</ref>

Further, theorist Michel Foucault explicated that confession, as an act inherent to the social structures of law, medicine, and faith, is a consolidated act of social oppression: confining subjects within traditional hegemonies of shame, guilt, and socially-constructed requirements of forgiveness.<ref>  Bloom, Myra D. Textual Transgressions: Confessional Discourse in Late Twentieth-Century Canadian and Québécois Writing. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2014.</ref>

Feminist discourse is separated on the mode: whilst some theorists regard the depiction of issues such as sexual violence, eating disorders, and mental illness by female confessional writers as liberating, others view it as voyeuristic and objectifying.<ref name=":3" />

The [[New Formalism]] school of writing, a movement of the late 20th century which emphasised returns to formulaic and strictly metrical poetry, was formed in direct response to the dominance of confessional styles of poetry which were characterised by unfixed structures and [[free verse]], forms denigrated by the school as lacking finesse and craft.<ref name=":15">{{Cite journal|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/pmla/article/abs/what-is-new-formalism/919834980EDD67DB74EB883A522B8A01|title=What Is New Formalism?|first=Marjorie|last=Levinson|date=16 March 2007|journal=PMLA|volume=122|issue=2|pages=558–569|via=Cambridge University Press|doi=10.1632/pmla.2007.122.2.558|s2cid=6452197 |url-access=subscription}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last1=Jamison |first1=Leslie |last2=McGrath |first2=Charles |date=29 September 2015 |title=In the Age of Memoir, What's the Legacy of the Confessional Mode? |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/books/review/in-the-age-of-memoir-whats-the-legacy-of-the-confessional-mode.html |access-date=2022-05-18 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>