This chapter explore five works of gay literary autobiographical writing about the 1970s. These autobiographies by Michael Rumaker, Robert Glück, Kevin Killian, Essex Hemphill, and Bernard Cooper paint an ambivalent picture of the decade, a period in which the unprecedented rewards and celebratory tenor of sexual liberation did not merely erase the traumas of the past: homophobia, self-hatred, and abusive relationships. Most of these writers are quite different from one another; they belonged to different gay cultural scenes and lived and worked in different cities across the US. By identifying shared themes across their work, however, this chapter illuminates why the 1970s was a pivotal moment in the formation of gay literature as we know it.

Gay American autobiographical writing since the year 2000 became “post-gay,” where “gay” denotes a distinctive, unitary gay male cultural tradition. Post-gay means gay plus: the “post” signifies the movement toward an intersectional model of identity, where other dimensions of culture are integrated with sexuality, and sexual cultures – such as elite gay culture – are transformed by their intersection with black, brown, yellow, and other colors of the rainbow. The 1990s saw the explosive visibility of what was then called the “lesbigay” community in all areas of American public life. That tide ebbed during the second Bush administration, in the backlash against LGBT rights. But the cultural work progressed apace, becoming socially diversified. The first two decades of the twenty-first century have seen the proliferation of gay US voices. Not simply de-pathologized, and not simply decriminalized, self-consciously gay autobiographical writing has multiplied into as many niche segments as the overall population. These include hyphenated queer Chicano authors, memoirs about drug addiction, and pre-Obergefell gay marriage chronicles, among other intersectional narratives.

The Mono Lake case was followed by a surge of interest across the nation in use of the public trust doctrine as a tool of environmental advocacy, and in some jurisdictions, a statement of environmental rights. This chapter reviews the ongoing development of the doctrine around the United States: the different forms of law through which it operates, the different resources it protects, different values vindicated, and even different legal theories about the nature of the doctrine itself. The variety reveals there is no such thing as “the American public trust doctrine,” only a tapestry of related implementations of the public trust principles at the core of the doctrine – the partnered state trustee obligations and corresponding public rights. The chapter also considers the contested intersection between the trust and federal law. While scholars debate the existence of a federal trust, the doctrine is increasingly recognized as a background principle of state property law for the purposes of takings litigation under the federal Fifth Amendment. In a little-known chapter of Supreme Court history, the justices negotiated not to address the role of the trust in takings litigation.

This chapter discusses the landmark Mono Lake litigation that finally reached the California Supreme Court, National Audubon Society vs. Superior Court – the case that turned the tide for the survival of Mono Lake, through public trust reasoning that would go on to foment a quiet revolution in environmental law. The chapter reviews the basic elements of the litigation, introducing the parties, their commanding legal avatars, and their overall positions before unpacking the specific arguments that made it to court. Then it highlights the most important doctrinal features of the landmark decision, including its affirmation that environmental values are protected by the public trust doctrine, its application of the doctrine to the upper reaches of the watershed, its assertion that public trust obligations extend over time, and its understanding of the legal nature of the doctrine itself. In casting the doctrine as a nonwaivable obligation to protect environmental values for future generations – a quasi-constitutional constraint on sovereign authority – the decision set the stage for its recognition as a tool of environmental law, and perhaps even a framework for environmental rights.

This chapter explores “trust-rights” climate litigation, claiming sovereign obligations to protect the atmosphere, public rights to climate stability, or both. It begins with scholarly consideration of these strategies, reviewing sources of environmental rights, application of public trust principles to climate, and critiques of the atmospheric trust. It reveals the hidden duality of trust-rights climate claims as a pairing of reciprocal rights and duties. Then it reviews the explosion of trust-rights climate advocacy around the world, including the conclusion in Urgenda Foundation v. Netherlands that the nation had failed its duty under the European Convention on Human Rights to limit contributions to climate change; the failed attempt in Juliana v. United States to partner an atmospheric trust claim with constitutional rights asserted under the Due Process Clause; and a new generation of advocacy to build trust-rights principles into U.S. state constitutions. Finally, it considers the arguments against – and in favor of – trust-rights advocacy, addressing both constitutional concerns about the separation of powers and practical concerns about bringing uncertain impact litigation.

The AIDS memoir has become one of the most common genres of gay men’s writing. American autobiographical accounts of AIDS can be found across a wide range of genres, including fictionalized versions in novels and poetry. There is considerable variety in these texts’ representations of the disease, yet, for all their variety, most AIDS autobiographies have in common the paradoxical fact that they are usually about another with AIDS rather than the writer’s own experience of AIDS. This is the case even when the writer is himself infected. The emphasis on care connects to the importance of community in both the gay male experience of AIDS and of literature.

Chapter 2 reviews Plath’s metaphorical employment of the witch-martyr figure within the political and religious framework of the Cold War. The chapter outlines Plath’s subversion of the religious vocabulary and themes in her poems, like ‘Lady Lazarus’, particularly its draft, and her parallelling doctors and priests in short stories, such as ‘Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams’ to critique the rhetoric of the Cold War. The chapter gives evidence that Plath employs the female body as a site of modern political and medical institutional violence, seeking inspiration from the power imbalance of the early modern witch trials and Joan of Arc’s martyrdom. The close examination of Plath’s drafts of ‘Fever 103°’ and ‘Lady Lazarus’ concludes the chapter on Plath’s Cold War poetics. It argues that the anticlerical and anti-authoritarian language of her poetry reimagines witch prosecutions, martyrdom, and inquisition in periods of political torture and nuclear warfare.

Chapter 7 introduces the cultural and political context of post-war Britain in which the rise of English nationalism, immigration from the Commonwealth countries, Cold War anxieties, and the development of the Neo-Pagan Wicca religion contributed to the association of witchcraft with the dark other. The chapter reviews Plath’s short stories and poems written about a small English village community and beekeeping during the early 1960s, arguing that she engages with contemporary concerns of exclusionary politics and the racist and colonial rhetoric of witchcraft. Her bee metaphor interrogates the binary between self and otherness and ideas about magical and racialised power. The chapter concludes that in comparing the bees to diabolical flying women, Plath simultaneously challenges and reinforces the identification of the dark other with fearful magical power.

The Conclusion reviews Plath’s engagement with the supernatural within the political, cultural, and literary context of post-war America and Britain. It summarises the nuances of concepts like witch, witchcraft, black and white magic, and their relation to gender and power. The Conclusion also emphasises the importance of examining Plath’s manuscripts and additional archival materials, which her demonstrate continuous interest in magical themes around gender power dynamics. Sylvia Plath and the Supernatural concludes that the re-examination of Plath’s works with an approach of the supernatural is timely and significant not only for Plath scholarship but for literary studies. It positions the comprehensive analysis of this book in the historical reckoning with witch trials and reflects on the lasting relationship between the language of magic and poetry.

The Introduction situates Sylvia Plath and the Supernatural within the current scholarship of Plath studies along with the recent new publications of Plath’s works. It introduces the purpose of the book and reviews the previous, often misguided approaches to Plath’s relationship to the supernatural and the occult. The Introduction emphasises the new approach of bringing together literary studies with the framework of the early modern witch trials and historical studies on witchcraft to interrogate the full extent Plath engaged with the political, cultural, and literary heritages of the European and American witch-hunts. Across seven chapters, this book reviews the way in which gender, magic, and power intersect in her poetry and prose contextualised within the post-war era.

Chapter 1 situates Plath’s work within McCarthyism (anti-Communist witch-hunt) and looks at her knowledge of the Salem witch trials, from American literature to her encounters with contemporary political discourses. The chapter examines Plath’s poems inspired by the early modern witch-hunt, such as ‘Witch Burning’ and ‘The Times Are Tidy,’ and considers her employment of the witch figure as a metaphor for political and gender nonconformists during the Cold War, seeking inspiration the trials of witches and the Rosenbergs. The chapter then comparatively reads Plath’s novel The Bell Jar (1963) and Arthur Miller’s drama The Crucible (1953), arguing that Plath draws on the concept of witch-hunt as an abuse of institutional power, which was parallelled with McCarthyism and the return to Puritanical morals in post-war America. The chapter reviews Plath’s historical, literary, and political engagement with the legacies of the Salem witch trials and offers an understanding of her poetic deployment of the witch figure.

Chapter 4 discusses the literary, cultural, and political influence of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and the Faust legend in the works of Plath and her contemporaries. The chapter examines Plath’s textual engagement with Faustian plays and the way in which she seeks inspiration from the themes of the texts from her juvenilia until her late poetry. The historical, religious, psychoanalytical, and political interpretations of demons, demonic possession, and diabolism were present in post-war discourses, borrowing the vocabulary from the well-known play about a black magician and Mephistopheles. The chapter revises over-simplified narratives around Plath’s use of vocabulary associated with diabolism to show her knowledge of the subject that influenced her and demonstrates that American poets, such as Anne Sexton, Karl Shapiro, and John Berryman also employed Faustian themes in their poetry. It concludes that the Faust legend had significant role in post-war literature and culture, re-interpreting the meaning of diabolism and sin within the mid-century political landscape.

Chapter 3 describes the influence of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and The Tempest on Plath’s poetry and prose, focusing on the gendered concepts of witchcraft and magic. The chapter contextualises Plath’s depiction of maternal malice and paternal control in the framework of twentieth-century interpretations of Macbeth’s witches and Prospero from The Tempest. It addresses the mythological origins of the female trio as metaphysical beings with divinatory powers who, for Plath, embody the inescapable maternal presence. The chapter outlines the similarities between Prospero’s magical power and the beekeeping of Plath’s father figure as a magical-scholarly power. In her writings, likewise seeks inspiration from her childhood, reimagining her Atlantic seascape as the magic island from The Tempest in which Prosperoean father emerges as an idealised and dominant figure. The chapter concludes that Plath’s allusions to the early modern supernatural figures were shaped and paralleled by post-war interpretations and poetic retellings. They reflect on the gendered understanding of magical power as a sinister and benevolent controlling force.

Chapter 6 introduces the concepts associated with supernatural transformations, metamorphosis, shapeshifting, and hybridity, each expressing a different approach to the transformation of the female body. Plath’s poems frequently seek inspiration from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which she interrogates the powerlessness of women who transform from human to vegetal form. The chapter situates Plath’s poetic narratives among her female contemporaries, such as Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, and even Margaret Atwood, who rely on feminist retellings of classical myths to question concerns about women’s autonomy and social position. The chapter outlines Plath’s employment of the concept of shapeshifting, associated with witches and folkloric beliefs, to reflect on the liberatory powers the animal form (often flying creatures) offers to women. It also argues that Plath experiments with the fluid boundaries between the human and the nonhuman in one of her most well-known poems, ‘Ariel,’ which portrays an imaginative flying motion as transformation.