Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in English
from c.1970 to the Present  

Poet: Ted Hughes

Nationality/Ethnicity

British: Yorkshire, England

Major Influences

Original Greek and Latin Source(s)

Aeschylus, Euripides, Ovid, Seneca, Homer.

Associations with Literary Period/Movements

General Comment

Hughes draws on (whether directly or indirectly) Aeschylus, Euripides, Ovid, Seneca, Racine, and a little Homer (perhaps via Virgil and Dante). Use of 'Atom' in Tales from Ovid recalls Lucretius. Classical material also mediated via Shakespeare. Hughes' introduces imaginative leaps between ancient texts (or his ideas about these), myth and nature, for example, his habit of imagining birds in terms of Olympian deities.

Significant features of Hughes' interaction with classical material are: dialogue with myth rather than classical text; linguistic experimentation rather than close translation; interpolation and transposition; focus on images (especially from nature) and on famous figures; anthropological rather than historical framing of myth and the responses to it in the ancient authors; achronological allusions that use a classical or allusion to link two or more part classical figures or situations.

Publications

Poems with Classical referents (listed by volume / title of poem)

Plays (Classical adaptations)