Where did Hughes spend his childhood?
Calder Valley, Yorkshire
Which ideas was he influenced to write about in the Pennine part of Yorkshire?
Landscape, weather and creatures
What was Hughes interested in? (outside literature)
Prehistory, myth and shamnism
Who were Hughes’ literary influences?
Shakespeare, Hopkins, Dylan Thomas, and modern European poetry
What other outdoor hobbies did Hughes do?
Fishing, hunting, farming
Why did Hughes use animals in his poems?
He used them to attribute human characteristics to critique how individuals/societies behaved
How can his relationship with Sylvia Plath be described?
Passionate and tumultuous
Describe some of Hughes’ shamanist beliefs.
- Believed there was a connection between animal life and the defone world
- “The divine being” = state of a shaman whose cultural ego collapsed and plunged back into spiritual/animal consciousness
Hughes believed that the power of poetry can be a special imaginative space. Expand more on what he means here.
The ‘errors of culture’ (divisions and detachments of the cerebral vs the physical, man, and nature) could be healed.
State some of Hughes’ religious beliefs.
- Some supreme creative force was frequently expressed in his work (reverence for powers of Nature)
- Believed humanity was alienated from the divine
