This collection of sixteen articles, written by leading specialists in Classical and English literature, is an important contribution to the critical assessment of Ted Hughes, one of the most popular and controversial English poets of the late 20th century. The chapters are arranged broadly chronologically according to Hughes's publications, and deal with different aspects of his engagement with the culture and literature of ancient Greece and Rome, including translations, original works, classical thought, and ideologies in his drama and verse. Hughes is revealed as a leading figure in literary reception of the Classics in 20th century poetry, a sharply intelligent and sensitive reader of some of the world's foundational texts.
Ted Hughes and the Classics,Keith Sagar Hughes's first translation,Stuart Gillespie Can (modern) poets do classical drama? The case of Ted Hughes,Lorna Hardwick Eliot's Seneca, Ted Hughes'sOedipus,John Talbot Living myths,Janne Stigen Drangsholt Mutilated towards alignment?':Prometheus on his Cragand the 'Cambridge School' of anthropology,Vanda Zajko Hughes's myth: the Classics inGaudeteandCave Birds,Neil Roberts Between monarchy and democracy: neo-classicism and the Laureate poetry of Ted Hughes,Roger Rees 'A holiday in a rest home': Ted Hughes asvatesinTales from Ovid,Garrett A. Jacobsen Passionin extremisin Ted Hughes'sTales from Ovid,Anne-Marie Tatham The transformation of the Actaeon myth: Ovid,Metamorphoses3 and Ted Hughes'sTales from Ovid,Jennifer Ingleheart Birthday Letters from Pontus: Ted Hughes and the white noise of classical elegy,Genevieve Liveley Ted Hughes: allusion and poetic language,Michael Silk The Hughes Version: commercial considerations and dramatic imagination,Hallil#µ