Ted Hughes's Expressionism: the Encyclopaedic Range and Maverick Utterance of England's Greatest Twentieth Century Poet

Ted Hughes (1930-1998) is one of the most important English language poets of the twentieth century. He published over a hundred books, including collections of poetry, translations, plays, stories, libretti, collaborations with artists and experimental works. Within that range he adopted a variety of styles, modes and registers that have been variously identified as mythic, elegiac, narrative, autobiographical, confessional, devotional and formal. The range of content Hughes drew on, including myth, conflict, nature & landscape, religion, the occult, philosophy and autobiography), and themes he addressed (vitality/violence, ecology, male/female relationships, grief, guilt and bereavement and issues of meaning and purpose to name but a few) embody a similar catholicity.

The encyclopaedic diversity of Hughes's outputs has generated scholarly responses as varied as the work itself, but within that richness and plurality there is sometimes a sense that the essential Hughes is missing - what is it that is truly distinctive about Hughes's work, which marks him out as a major poet? Where does his main achievement lie? This research will answer that question by identifying Hughes's dominant mode as Expressionist and arguing that his best, most characteristic and most important work is written in the Expressionist mode. The research will present an understanding of Expressionism as a broad movement or tendency across the arts in which the artist is concerned to articulate the truth as he or she sees it under the influence of a strong, visionary subjectivity, rooted in an all important 'inner-life'. For the Expressionist artist, Naturalistic, Impressionistic or Realist representations of subject matter are inadequate, leading to the deployment of a range of techniques - hyperbole, distortion, symbolism, abstraction, typology - in the quest to express 'the truth'.

The identification of Hughes as an Expressionist poet will also allow a more precise identification of his secondary modes, giving a holistic overview of his achievement, and enabling a number of limiting interpretations or misconceptions about Hughes to be challenged. For example, although the research will take into account the importance of Hughes's relationship with his first wife Sylvia Plath and his subsequent partner Assia Wevill, and the traumatic impact of their suicides on his life and work, the research will eschew reductive biographical readings and use the identification of Expressionism as Hughes's dominant mode to critique the rather crude 'mythic'/'elegiac' binary ('mythic' = obscure, symbolic, arcane, 'bad'; 'elegiac' = personal, moving, accessible, 'good') that has recently begun to emerge in Hughes studies. The research will also catalyse new approaches to Hughes's animal and nature poetry, much of which (for example, 'Wind', 'Pike' and 'The Howling of Wolves') does not simply derive from the precise observations of an 'experienced countryman' as is often implied, but is characterised by the transformative and didactic subjectivity typical of Expressionism. The research will also challenge the common conception of Hughes as a parochial 'Little England' establishment figure, (obsequious poet laureate, tweedy fisherman and 'traditional' nature poet), demonstrating that he was a socially and culturally engaged, international artist of global stature.

Finally, the research will enable the development of pedagogical resources and related in-person and online seminars ('The Expressionist Poetry Workshop' (TEPW)), that will encourage poets in community, University and other contexts to write in the Expressionist mode, using Expressionistic techniques, challenging the current limiting dominance of the autobiographical mode and the 'relatable' first-person lyric. Associated with the workshop will be a national competition, with successful entries being published in an anthology: 'Visionary Subjectivity: Poems from the Expressionist Poetry Workshop'