likewise highlighted the ubiquity of confessional 'self-disclosure' in the public domains of social media and the internet, and how twenty-first century technologies are supplanting the traditional distinctions between an individual's public life and private self. Criticisms of the confessional writing genre 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. Owing to the exclusively heterosexual and upper-class 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,' as well as lacking diverse social and cultural perspectives. 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. 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. 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. References See also Confessional poetry Life Writing Robert Lowell Postmodernism Writing