Ted Hughes Has Been Described as a “Voyeur of Violence” (Calvin Bedient, 1974). to What Extent Does Your Reading of His Poetry Encourage You to Agree with This View?

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Ted Hughes has been described as a “voyeur of violence” (Calvin Bedient, 1974). To what extent does your reading of his poetry encourage you to agree with this view? Hughes has frequently been described as a poet of blood and violence, and as quoted by Calvin Bedient, a “voyeur of violence”. The “voyeur of violence”, in his poetry shows that he enjoys describing violence and that in some of his poetry suggests that there is an element of pornographic depiction in his poetry. For example in some of his poetry he uses specticals of animals hurting each other, from which could be said that Hughes likes the compulsive element in watching the animals fight. It is almost like in thr roman times where the gladiators fought against each other and the audience enjoying watching them fight. In the “thought fox”, Hughes’s poetic vision and in the conflict between violence and tenderness which seems to be directly engendered by...The poem envisions a clear outline of violence; this is shown by the language, tone and rhythm. The poem takes place in a room late at night, where the Hughes is sitting alone in his study at his desk. Outside, the night is silent, dark and starless. However, Hughes senses a presence which begins to disturb him. “Through the window I see no star: Something more near: Though deeper within darkness: Is entering the loneliness.” The disturbance is not the darkness of the night, to which the night itself is a metaphor which could be directed to the darkness of the Hughes’s imagination., At first the poem has no clear outline of where it is going as the animal is not seen but the reader feels the intensely vulnerability of the animal first before Hughes’s notices it. The language is he uses is gentle which indicates how peaceful not only Hughes is but the animal too, this is made clear from words such as, “delicately” and “A fox’s noise touches
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