ABSTRACT
Prosopopoeia, as a literary device is not uncommon in both English
and American literature, since authors have been using it throughout
literary history in order to introduce a manufactured and contrived
presentation of characters or personified things, that is, feigned sub
specie personae. This paper examines the importance of prosopopoeia
as a literary device in revealing certain personal prophetic visions when
in anticipation of one’s own imminent death with examples from Sylvia
Plath and David Bowie’s poetics. Through the impersonation of the
absent speaker or a personification, the language of the prosopopoeia
has a purpose of transfiguration by revealing the staggering horrors of
inner struggles, thus becoming the enabling device through which one
speaks about one’s forthcoming, expected death. More specifically, this
paper focuses on the adoption of such voices of the imagined Biblical
figures in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Lady Lazarus” and in David Bowie’s song
“Lazarus” which express a prophetic vision of the personal self, as well
as the predictive resurrection and life after death through one’s own
immortal artistic legacy and output.