No poet has observed animals more accurately than Ted Hughes has done. His depiction of the animals observed is remarkable, vivid, startling, and truthful. He relates that animal to other creatures and also to human experiences and human concepts; represents the typical stresses and contradiction of human nature and also of the Nature.
1. Ted Hughes’ Animal Imagery
Presenter: Hira Mukhtar
Instructor: Prof. Liaqat Masih
2. Ted Hughes
One of the 20th century’s greatest English
poets
Spent much of his time reading and
rereading all of Shakespeare’s works
Spent most time reading folklore and Yeats’
poems
Called a nature poet
3. “Imagine what you are writing about. See it
and live it.”
~ Ted Hughes, Poetry in the Making
4. According to critics....
No poet has observed animals more
accurately than Ted Hughes has done
Hughes’s depiction of the animals observed
is remarkable, vivid, startling, and truthful
5. Wide Range of Animal in
Hughes’s Poems
Hawk
Thrush
Pike
Jaguar
Skylark
Horse
Crow
Cat
Mouse
Bull
Pig
Otter
Bullfrog
And several others
6. Animals
World of animals – Hughes’s favourite territory
Original description as well as symbolic
significance of animals
Depiction of animals throws light on human
nature
7. Hughes’s treatment of the
animals is different
Highly poetic
Highly fanciful
Highly symbolic
Highly significant
Highly expressive
Highly illuminating
Highly “modern” both in content and in style
8. Animal Description
Relates that animal to other creatures and
also to human experiences and human
concepts
Represents the typical stresses and
contradiction of human nature and also of
the Nature
9. Hawk Roosting
Established his reputation as a poet of the world
of animals
A hawk’s eye-view of the world
“It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot …..”
Hawk’s own point of view
and consciousness
The hawk becomes a mouthpiece of Nature
10. An Otter
Less a description of an
otter than an invocation
of the spirit of an otter
Otter – The opposite of the hawk
Symbolically,
“crying without answer for his lost paradise”
• Image of the dualism in man – neither wholly
body nor wholly spirit, neither wholly beast nor
wholly angel; yearning for immortal home
11. The Bull Moses
The original picture of a bull is combined with a
symbolic view of the animal
The human figures in the poem, the speaker and
the farmer, enhance the poem’s interest
The gulf between man and animal
represents the gulf between
civilized man and man’s animal self
12. Pike
First four stanzas – Description of the animal
Next three stanzas – Pikes can eat each other
when hungry
End of poem – the feelings of terror and awe
because of the “killer” pikes
13. The Crow Poems
Crow – A trickster
Remains a crow but reaches
human status
A satire on God’s creation of this universe and of
mankind
Mocking at God’s universe and at mankind
The Crow serving as a medium of mockery or satire
14. The Jaguar and
Second Glance at a Jaguar
Jaguar – A fierce beast
“a bang of blood in his brain”
“his stride is wildernesses of freedom”
The jaguar symbolizes Nature in all its wildness,
its fury, its destructiveness, and also its
splendour
The poems have a frightening effect
15. Thrushes
Thrushes – Terrifying creatures
“bounce and stab,” without
“any indolent procrastinations”
Move very swiftly like a bullet or a shark’s mouth
The uncontrollable energies of Nature are stated
Man appears to be a weak creature by the side of
these energies
16. The Horses
A different kind of poem
No wild force is depicted
Grand looking animals but
very gentle and passive
“They breathed, making no move,
With draped manes and titled hind-hooves,
Making no sound”
Gentle quality of the non-human world is focused
The patience and the silence of the horses
opposes the wildness of the jaguar and the hawk
17. Hughes’s Animal Poems
Present animals as creatures deserving of our
attention
Each species of animal has unique characteristics
Depict the contrast and similarity between animals
and mankind
Formidable, awful, spectacular, and fascinating
display of God’s creatures in a universe which is
mysterious and unfathomable