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Unit 31: Hughes and T.S. Eliot

• Describe the detailed analysis of the poem, “The Thought Fox” Notes
• Describe the analysis of the poem, “Thrushes”
• Understand the biography of T.S. Eliot
• Explain the detailed analysis of Eliot’s “The Waste Land”
• Discuss Ted Hughes as an Animal Poet

Introduction

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, of an old New England family. He
was educated at Harvard and did graduate work in philosophy at the Sorbonne, Harvard, and Merton
College, Oxford. He settled in England, where he was for a time a schoolmaster and a bank clerk, and
eventually literary editor for the publishing house Faber & Faber, of which he later became a director.
He founded and, during the seventeen years of its publication (1922-1939), edited the exclusive and
influential literary journal Criterion. In 1927, Eliot became a British citizen and about the same time
entered the Anglican Church.
Eliot has been one of the most daring innovators of twentieth-century poetry. Never compromising
either with the public or indeed with language itself, he has followed his belief that poetry should
aim at a representation of the complexities of modern civilization in language and that such
representation necessarily leads to difficult poetry. Despite this difficulty his influence on modern
poetic diction has been immense. Eliot’s poetry from Prufrock (1917) to the Four Quartets (1943)
reflects the development of a Christian writer: the early work, especially The Waste Land (1922), is
essentially negative, the expression of that horror from which the search for a higher world arises.
In Ash Wednesday (1930) and the Four Quartets this higher world becomes more visible; nonetheless
Eliot has always taken care not to become a religious poet and often elittled the power of poetry as
a religious force. However, his dramas Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Family Reunion
(1939) are more openly Christian apologies. In his essays, especially the later ones, Eliot advocates
a traditionalism in religion, society, and literature that seems at odds with his pioneer activity as a
poet. But although the Eliot of Notes towards the Definition of Culture (1948) is an older man than
the poet of The Waste Land, it should not be forgotten that for Eliot tradition is a living organism
comprising past and present in constant mutual interaction. Eliot’s plays Murder in the Cathedral
(1935), The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential Clerk (1954), and
The Elder Statesman(1959) were published in one volume in 1962; Collected Poems 1909-62 appeared
in 1963.

31.1 Ted Hughes: The Thought Fox

31.1.1 Introduction of the Poet

Edward James Hughes OM (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998), more commonly known as Ted
Hughes, was an English poet and children’s writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets
of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.
Hughes was married to the American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until her death by suicide in 1963
at the age of 30. His part in the relationship became controversial to some feminists and (particularly)
American admirers of Plath. His last poetic work, Birthday Letters (1998), explored their complex
relationship. These poems make reference to Plath’s suicide, but none of them addresses directly
the circumstances of her death. A poem discovered in October 2010, Last letter, describes what
happened during the three days leading up to Plath’s suicide.
In 2008 The Times ranked Hughes fourth on their list of “The 50 greatest British writerssince 1945”.
On 22 March 2010, it was announced that Hughes would be commemorated with a memorial in
Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, to be installed in early 2011.

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