Ted Hughes: La función alegórica y la metáfora animal en "The Hawk in the Rain y Lupercal"

Abstract

The main focus of the present article, as well as many of the ideas, feelings and thoughts here expressed were written, although not published in the years 69 and 70. Checking back it is surprising to see that later bibliography has corroborated those perceptions especially the ones that refer to the animal metaphor as a projection of the dominant attitudes and behaviors in the 60s and to the thematic conflict between the world of the body and the world of the reason. Recapturing our stands at that time the aim is, however, to start a revision ofTed Hughes's poetic work and his systematic process towards an inward vision that turns chaotic and hermetic after Lupercal and The Hawk in the Rain in Wodow and Crow, with which we will deal in a coming essay, ending up and closing the circle of this passionate pilgrimage with Birthday Letters. In the present work, then, we consider some aspects of Hughes's difference with the generation of poets belonging to The Movement, in the bestiary tradition in English literature and in the use of allegorical function, described by Dante, as the method to interpret the historical, social and personal moment that he lived, a context that so much then as now we feel and understand as our own.