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

泰德·休斯(1930-1998)是二十世纪最重要的英语诗人之一。他出版了一百多本书，包括诗集、翻译、戏剧、故事、歌词、与艺术家的合作和实验作品。在这一范围内，他采用了各种风格、模式和语域，这些风格、模式和语域被不同地识别为神话、挽歌、叙事、自传体、忏悔、虔诚和正式。休斯使用的内容范围很广，包括神话、冲突、自然和风景、宗教、神秘学、哲学和自传)，以及他所讨论的主题(活力/暴力、生态、男女关系、悲伤、内疚和丧亲，以及意义和目的的问题等等)都体现了类似的普遍性。休斯作品的百科全书式的多样性产生了与作品本身一样多种多样的学术反应，但在这种丰富性和多元性中，有时会有一种感觉，即休斯本质上的缺失--休斯作品中真正与众不同的是什么，使他成为一位重要的诗人？他的主要成就在哪里？本研究将通过确定休斯的主导模式是表现主义者来回答这个问题，并认为他最好、最具特色和最重要的作品是以表现主义模式写成的。这项研究将提出一种对表现主义的理解，即艺术家在一种强烈的、有远见的主观性的影响下，关注于表达他或她所看到的真相，这种运动或趋势贯穿于整个艺术领域，植根于一种非常重要的内在生活。对于这位表现主义艺术家来说，对题材的自然主义、印象主义或现实主义的表现是不够的，导致了一系列技术的运用--夸张、扭曲、象征、抽象、类型学--以寻求表达“真相”。将休斯认定为表现主义诗人也将使人们能够更准确地识别他的次要模式，对他的成就进行整体概述，并使一些对休斯的限制性解释或误解受到挑战。例如，尽管这项研究将考虑到休斯与他的第一任妻子西尔维娅·普拉斯和他随后的伴侣阿西娅·韦维尔的关系的重要性，以及他们的自杀对他的生活和工作的创伤影响，但研究将避免简单化的传记阅读，并使用表现主义作为休斯的主导模式来批评最近开始出现在休斯研究中的相当原始的“神话”/“挽歌”二元(‘神话’=晦涩、象征、神秘、‘坏’；‘悲歌’=个人的、感动的、可接近的、‘好的’)。这项研究还将催生对休斯的动物和自然诗歌的新方法，这些诗歌中的许多(例如，《风》、《派克》和《狼的咆哮》)并不是像人们经常暗示的那样，简单地源于对‘有经验的乡下人’的精确观察，而是以表现主义典型的变革性和说教性主观性为特征。这项研究还将挑战人们普遍认为休斯是一个狭隘的“小英格兰”权贵人物(奉承的桂冠诗人、衣冠楚楚的渔民和“传统的”自然诗人)，展示他是一位参与社会和文化活动的国际全球艺术家。最后，这项研究将促进教学资源的开发以及相关的面对面和在线研讨会(“表现主义诗歌研讨会”(TEPW))，这将鼓励社区、大学和其他背景下的诗人以表现主义模式写作，使用表现主义技巧，挑战目前自传模式和“相关的”第一人称抒情的限制主导地位。与研讨会相关的是一项全国性的比赛，成功的参赛作品将被出版在一本选集中：《远见的主观性：表现主义诗歌研讨会的诗歌》

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'