Book | Chapter
The nature of Englishness
the hybrid poetics of Ted Hughes
pp. 107-123
Abstract
"Strawberry Hill" tries to imagine a suppressed wildness at the heart of English, and Englishness, equally expressed—the poem seems to argue—by a Restoration stoat dancing on the lawns of Horace Walpole's villa, and the slang of black immigrants in contemporary Brixton. Overkeen to press its point home, there's a moment where the poem's failure to do so acknowledges a cultural diversity resisting of Hughes's method. This is true, too, of "Shibboleth", a neglected lyric from Capriccio (1990), and this essay moves from one to the other, also considering Hughes on race, and nationality, elsewhere.
Publication details
Published in:
Roberts Neil, Wormald Mark, Gifford Terry (2018) Ted Hughes, nature and culture. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Pages: 107-123
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-97574-0_7
Full citation:
Ravinthiran Vidyan (2018) „The nature of Englishness: the hybrid poetics of Ted Hughes“, In: N. Roberts, M. Wormald & T. Gifford (eds.), Ted Hughes, nature and culture, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 107–123.