Ted Hughes, Class and Violence - Softcover

Bentley, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1474275575 ISBN 13: 9781474275576

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016

Synopsis

Ted Hughes is widely regarded as a major figure in twentieth-century poetry, but the impact of Hughes's class background on his work has received little attention. This is the first full length study to take the measure of the importance of class in Hughes. It presents a radically new version of Hughes that challenges the image of Hughes as primarily a nature poet, as well as the image of the Tory Laureate. The controversy over 'natural' violence in Hughes's early poems, Hughes's relationship with Seamus Heaney, the Laureateship, and Hughes's revisiting of his relationship with Sylvia Plath in Birthday Letters (1998), are reconsidered in terms of Hughes's class background. Drawing on the thinking of cultural theorists such as Slavoj Žižek, Terry Eagleton, and Julia Kristeva, the book presents new political readings of familiar Hughes poems, alongside consideration of posthumously collected poems and letters, to reveal a surprising picture of a profoundly class-conscious poet.

About this title

Book Description:

Drawing on the work of such theorists as Zizek and Eagleton, this book offers innovative political readings of class and violence in Ted Hughes's work.

About the Author:

Paul Bentley is Reader in English Literature at the University of St. Mark & St. John, Plymouth, UK. He is author of The Poetry of Ted Hughes: Language, Illusion & Beyond (1998) and Scientist of the Strange: The Poetry of Peter Redgrove (2002). He has published widely on modern poetry.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1474275575
• ISBN 13: 9781474275576
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 168