Ted Hughes and Trauma

Ted Hughes and Trauma PDF Author: Danny O'Connor
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137557923
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
This book is a radical re-appraisal of the poetry of Ted Hughes, placing him in the context of continental theorists such as Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and Slavoj Zizek to address the traumas of his work. As an undergraduate, Hughes was visited in his sleep by a burnt fox/man who left a bloody handprint on his essay, warning him of the dangers of literary criticism. Hereafter, criticism became ‘burning the foxes’. This book offers a defence of literary criticism, drawing Hughes’ poetry and prose into the network of theoretical work he dismissed as ‘the tyrant’s whisper’ by demonstrating a shared concern with trauma. Covering a wide range of Hughes’ work, it explores the various traumas that define his writing. Whether it is comparing his idea of man as split from nature with that of Jacques Lacan, considering his challenging relationship with language in light of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, seeing him in the art gallery and at the movies with Gilles Deleuze, or considering his troubled relationship with femininity in regard to Teresa Brennan and Slavoj Žižek, Burning the Foxes offers a fresh look at a familiar poet.

Ted Hughes and Trauma

Ted Hughes and Trauma PDF Author: Danny O'Connor
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137557923
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is a radical re-appraisal of the poetry of Ted Hughes, placing him in the context of continental theorists such as Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and Slavoj Zizek to address the traumas of his work. As an undergraduate, Hughes was visited in his sleep by a burnt fox/man who left a bloody handprint on his essay, warning him of the dangers of literary criticism. Hereafter, criticism became ‘burning the foxes’. This book offers a defence of literary criticism, drawing Hughes’ poetry and prose into the network of theoretical work he dismissed as ‘the tyrant’s whisper’ by demonstrating a shared concern with trauma. Covering a wide range of Hughes’ work, it explores the various traumas that define his writing. Whether it is comparing his idea of man as split from nature with that of Jacques Lacan, considering his challenging relationship with language in light of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, seeing him in the art gallery and at the movies with Gilles Deleuze, or considering his troubled relationship with femininity in regard to Teresa Brennan and Slavoj Žižek, Burning the Foxes offers a fresh look at a familiar poet.

Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes PDF Author: Jonathan Bate
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062643703
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He was one of Britain’s most important poets. With an equal gift for poetry and prose, he was also a prolific children’s writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letterwriter since John Keats. His magnetic personality and insatiable appetite for friendship, love, and life also attracted more scandal than any poet since Lord Byron. His lifelong quest to come to terms with the suicide of his first wife, Sylvia Plath, is the saddest and most infamous moment in the public history of modern poetry. Hughes left behind a more complete archive of notes and journals than any other major poet, including thousands of pages of drafts, unpublished poems, and memorandum books that make up an almost complete record of Hughes’s inner life, which he preserved for posterity. Renowned scholar Jonathan Bate has spent five years in the Hughes archives, unearthing a wealth of new material. His book offers, for the first time, the full story of Hughes’s life as it was lived, remembered, and reshaped in his art.

Reclaiming Assia Wevill

Reclaiming Assia Wevill PDF Author: Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807172286
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
Reclaiming Assia Wevill: Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and the Literary Imagination reconsiders cultural representations of Assia Wevill (1927–1969), according her a more significant position than a femme fatale or scapegoat for marital discord and suicide in the lives and works of two major twentieth-century poets. Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick’s innovative study combines feminist recovery work with discussions of the power and gendered dynamics that shape literary history. She focuses on how Wevill figures into poems by Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, showing that they often portrayed her in harsh, conflicted, even demeaning terms. Their representations of Wevill established condemnatory narratives that were perpetuated by subsequent critics and biographers and in works of popular culture. In Plath’s literary treatments, Goodspeed-Chadwick locates depictions of both desirable and undesirable femininity, conveyed in images of female bodies as beautiful but barren or as vehicles for dangerous, destructive acts. By contrast, Hughes’s portrayals illustrate the role Wevill occupied in his life as muse and abject object. His late work Capriccio constitutes a sustained meditation on trauma, in which Hughes confronts Wevill’s suicide and her killing of their daughter, Shura. Goodspeed-Chadwick also analyzes Wevill’s self-representations by examining artifacts that she authored or on which she collaborated. Finally, she discusses portrayals of Wevill in recent works of literature, film, and television. In the end, Goodspeed-Chadwick shows that Wevill remains an object of both fascination and anger, as she was for Plath, and a figure of attraction and repulsion, as she was for Hughes. Reclaiming Assia Wevill reconsiders its subject’s tragic life and lasting impact in regard to perceived gender roles and notions of femininity, power dynamics in heterosexual relationships, and the ways in which psychological traumas impact life, art, and literary imagination.

Birthday Letters

Birthday Letters PDF Author: Ted Hughes
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374525811
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
The past contemporary poet gives an account in 88 poems in letter form of hisromance and the life spent with Sylvia Plath.

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers PDF Author: Max Porter
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555979378
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
Here he is, husband and father, scruffy romantic, a shambolic scholar--a man adrift in the wake of his wife's sudden, accidental death. And there are his two sons who like him struggle in their London apartment to face the unbearable sadness that has engulfed them. The father imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness, while the boys wander, savage and unsupervised. In this moment of violent despair they are visited by Crow--antagonist, trickster, goad, protector, therapist, and babysitter. This self-described "sentimental bird," at once wild and tender, who "finds humans dull except in grief," threatens to stay with the wounded family until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and the pain of loss lessens with the balm of memories, Crow's efforts are rewarded and the little unit of three begins to recover: Dad resumes his book about the poet Ted Hughes; the boys get on with it, grow up. Part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter's extraordinary debut combines compassion and bravura style to dazzling effect. Full of angular wit and profound truths, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is a startlingly original and haunting debut by a significant new talent.

A Lover of Unreason

A Lover of Unreason PDF Author: Yehuda Koren
Publisher: Robson
ISBN: 1909396834
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
'Assia was my true wife, and the best friend I ever had', wrote Ted Hughes, after his lover surrendered her life and that of their young daughter in 1969, six years after Sylvia Plath had suffered a similiar fate. Diva, she-devil, enchantress, muse, Lillith, Jezebel - Assia inspired many epithets during her life. The tragic story of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes has always been related from one of two points of view: hers or his. Missing for over four decades had been a third: that of Hughes's mistress. This first biography of Assia Wevill views afresh the Plath-Hughes relationship and at the same time, recounts the journey that shaped her life. Wevill's is a complex story, formed as it is by the pull of often contrary forces.

The Iron Woman

The Iron Woman PDF Author: Ted Hughes
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571289096
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 89

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Book Description
Mankind for has polluted the seas, lakes and rivers. The Iron Woman has come to take revenge.Lucy understands the Iron Woman's rage and she too wants to save the water creatures from their painful deaths. But she also wants to save her town from total destruction.She needs help. Who better to call on but Hogarth and the Iron Man . . .?A sequel and companion volume to Ted Hughes' The Iron Man, this new, child-friendly setting will be treasured by a new generation of readers.

Moortown Diary

Moortown Diary PDF Author: Ted Hughes
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571262953
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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Book Description
Originally published in 1979, Moortown Diary is the updated version of Ted Hughes's acclaimed Devon farming sequence, written over a period of several years during which he was spending almost every day outside, either gardening or farming. The introduction and notes (added in 1989) sketch in the background from which these remarkable poems emerged as an improvised verse journal, sparely edited, coalescing spontaneously on the page. ' Moortown Diary keeps its eye firmly on the creatures behind the language. It's written in the style of Hughes's play translations: very swift and bright and urgent and speakable...Hughes strips away the protective layers - the soundproofed ears, the double-glazed eyes - that prevent us making contact with anything outside ourselves. Right now, I can't think of anything more important than that kind of poem. Because we're not just here to think about literature. We're here to try to wake up.' Alice Oswald, The Guardian 'It grips your heart, and your intestines, like a vice from the first page. He makes language as physical as a bruise, and in these poems beauty and tenderness blend with violence.' John Carey, Sunday Times 'The Moortown sequence includes some of Hughes's finest poems...They are like no other poems I have read, with a degree of intensity, sanity and grace that he has never equalled.' Anthony Thwaite, Times Literary Supplement

Trauma and the Golden Lady

Trauma and the Golden Lady PDF Author: Bob Fournier, Ph.D.
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1460291700
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
While Sylvia Plath’s life was short-lived, her accomplishments were immense, and two college archives now house her writings and valued possessions. Raised in an era when women were taught and expected to be subservient to men, Sylvia wanted more. She seemed to have all that anyone would need to succeed and be happy; however, something was wrong—seriously wrong. As she reached out for help in her time of desperation, Sylvia found a mental health system that was itself troubled and desperate for change. Although the system helped, it also traumatized her. While little was known about posttraumatic stress at the time, Dr. Fournier argues that it became a major factor in the life of this Golden Lady. Trauma and the Golden Lady shows what it is like for a person to struggle every day to keep their demons at bay and stay sane, while living with severe mental health problems. Over and over, Sylvia worked to perfect herself and avoid falling into a bottomless hole of nothingness and despair. With passion and a heavy heart, she focused on both these goals until the very end. Ultimately, Sylvia Plath’s personality development and life struggles, along with the effects of the trauma events she experienced, contributed to a suicidal movement that led to her death. While Sylvia’s demise left a wake that affected the lives of many, helping some and hurting others, she was truly a woman to be known and remembered.

The Poetry of Ted Hughes

The Poetry of Ted Hughes PDF Author: Dr. Paul Bentley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317892917
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
This text provides a lucid and accessible introduction to the poetry of Ted Hughes, a major figure in twentieth- century poetry whose work is concerned with the forces of nature and their interaction with the human mind. It is also the first full length study to place Hughes's poetry in the context of significant developments in literary theory that have occured during his life, drawing in particular on the 'French theorists'- Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and Roland Barthes. The study sheds new light on Hughes's prosody, and on such matters as Hughes's relation to the 'Movement' poets, the influence of Sylvia Plath, his relation to Romanticism, his interest in myth and shamanism, and the implications of the Laureateship for his work. The poems are presented in chronological order, tracing the development of Hughes's highly distinctive style. The study also discusses Hughes's recently published non-fiction- Winter Pollen (1994) and Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being (1992). The Poetry of Ted Hughes is indispensable for all students and academics interested in contemporary poetry and culture.