Gaining the Poetic Voice. Ted Hughes’s Gaudete
Gaining the Poetic Voice. Ted Hughes’s Gaudete

Summary/Abstract: “Gaudete” is one of Ted Hughes’s best-known volumes of poetry, although it has frequently been underappreciated by critics otherwise well-disposed towards Hughes’s work. In the present article, I try to show that “Gaudete” not only continues the poet’s overarching theme of the struggle between imagination and logic, or between science and poetry, but also introduces a mythical story of a man’s path to winning his own poetic voice. By setting the volume against Hughes’s other writings, it is demonstrated that he primarily desires “Gaudete” to be a song in praise of the new-found language in which to celebrate the goddess-figure, a divinity capable of bestowing the poetic gift. “Gaudete” is thus argued to dramatise the birth of a poetic inspiration beyond stripped-down logic and unhinged fleshly desire.

• Details
• Contents