TED HUGHES

ANIMAL ALLEGORIES

SRBU IULIANA MIHAELA

LITERE, ANUL III
Univ. Hyperion
TED HUGHES
Edward James Hughes (17 August 1930 -
28 October 1998), popularly known as Ted
Hughes, was the youngest child of William
Henry Hughes and Edith Farrar Hughes.
He was an English poet and a British Poet
Laureate from 1984 until his death.
He is best acknowledged for creating
influential poems that feature bold
metaphors, echoing language, imagery, and
speech rhythms.
He is called a nature poet.

He is considered one of the 20 th centurys

greatest English poets.
TED HUGHESS POEMS
Ted Hughes has composed over fusion of elegance and fervor in the natural
world.

Animals in the poems of Hughes are metaphor for his views on life. The animals
whom Ted Hughes captures in his poems reflect the conflict between violence
and tenderness the manner in which humans strive for ascendancy and success.

IMAGINE WHAT YOU ARE

WRITING ABOUT. SEE IT AND LIVE
IT
Ted Hughes, Poetry in the Making
He uses a lot of animals in his
poems
Hawk

Thrush

Jaguar

Pike

Cat

Horse crow

Mouse

Skylark

Otter

Bull

Bullfrog

Pig
He uses:
The world of animals this is his favourite
territory.

The original descriptions of animals and also

their symbolic significance.

Depiction of animals throwing light on the

human nature.
Animal description
Hughes relates animal to other creatures and even to
human experiences and human concepts.

He also represents the contradiction of human nature

and even of the Nature.
He uses animal in different ways:
Poetic
Symbolic

Significant

Fanciful

Expressive

Illuminating

Modern, both in content and style

Hawk Roosting
This poem helped Hughes to establish his name of a
poet of the world of animals.
The Hawks eye represents the view of the world:

It took the whole of Creation

To produce my foot, my each feather:

Now I hold Creation in my foot.

The Hawk becomes the mouthpiece of Nature.

An Otter

He uses more the invocation of the spirit of an otter than an actual

description of an otter.
The otter is the opposite of the hawk.

Symbolically represented:

crying without answer for his lost paradise

It is represented the image of the dualism in man neither wholly

body nor wholly spirit; neither wholly beast no wholly angel;
yearning for immortal home.
The Bull Moses

The original description of a bull is presented together with the

symbolic view of this animal.

The poems interest is enhanced by the human figures from the

poem: the speaker and the farmer.

The chasm between the bull and the man represents the chasm
between the civilized man and the animal nature of the man.
Pike

In the first four stanzas is presented the original description of

the animal.

In the next three stanzas is presented how the pikes can eat each
other when they are hungry.

In the end of the poem are presented the feelings of terror

because of the killer pikes.
The Crow Poems
The crow is a trickster.

It remains a crow, but reaches the human status.

There is a satire of Gods creation of the universe and of

mankind.

That is a mocking at the universe and at the mankind.

The Crow is used as an instrument of mockery and satire.

The Jaguar

The jaguar is a fierce beast.

It symbolizes the Nature in all its wildness and its fury, its
destructiveness and its beauty.

The poem has a frightening effect.

The Horse
This is a different king of poem, where no wild force is depicted.
The horse represents a big animal, but also a very gentle and
passive one.
The breathed, making no move

With draped manes and titled hind hooves,

Making no sound.

It is focused on the gentle qualities of the non-human.

The patience and the silence of the horses is the opposite of the
wildness of the jaguar and the hawk.
Ted Hughes and his Animal Poems
He presents animals as creatures that deserve the human
attention.

He emphasizes the fact that each animal has unique

characteristics.

There are described the differences and the similarities

between animals and mankind.

It is also represented the formidable, awful, spectacular of

the Gods creatures in an universe which is mysterious and
unfathomable.
Critics say that:
No poet has observed more accurately than Ted Hughes.

Hughess description of the animals from his poems is

remarkable, vivid, startling and truthful.