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Animal imagery in the poetry of Ted Hughes

University of British Columbia

Animal imagery is an important element in the poetry of Ted Hughes. These images, catalogued in this thesis, constitute an emblematic bestiary which helps convey Hughes's most important themes: heroism and survival, myth, attitudes to sexuality, and the role and function of the poet. Implicit in Hughes's thematic explorations is his essentially pessimistic world view of a polarized Manichean universe in which many elements of life are in disintegration. Hughes perceives the traditional role of the hero as incongruous with the fragmented consciousness of modern man. What emerges now as heroic is the will and endurance necessary for survival or for the acceptance of the ultimate merging of the self into the great processes of life. Hughes asserts also the need of man for some mythological framework within which to comprehend what he calls "the elemental power circuit of the universe." Animal images are the central focus for Hughes's important mythic presentations: metamorphosis as an image of the indestructibility of life, and the god-animal as symbol for creative and destructive forces in nature. Sexuality is such a creative force; the uninhibited actions of animals provide Hughes with useful images for his explorations of the attitudes and sexual practices of modern man. On a personal level, he sees sexual attraction as first savagely absorbing, then confining and stifling. However, Hughes views fecundity as a process linking man with all other life forms, providing a sort of immortality through the continuous wheel of life and death. The most central theme in the poetry of Hughes is a consideration of the nature and scope of the role of the artist. Hughes uses a wide range of animal images to suggest aspects of the poetic persona and to explore facets of the artist as both hunter and prey. Animal images present the role of the poet variously as prophet, critic, trickster or fool, most notably in the case of Crow. These themes culminate in "Gaudete", Hughes's most recently published book. They are presented in part through an emblematic bestiary and in part, through the "animal" nature of the central character, the Reverend Nicholas Lumb plus his demonic double, who becomes, microcosmically, a representative of the physical, sexual, "animal" side of man.

Text

2010-03-06

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/21642

English

University of British Columbia

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