Restructuring A New Human-Nature Relationship:A Study Of Ted Hughes’ Outlook On Nature

Ted Hughes is one of the most famous poets in the contemporary world.His poems express deep inner emotions in a straightforward and passionate tone,which brings a fresh wind to the British literary world.Hughes is fond of depicting violence in his poems,for which he has the title of “violence poet”.Fascinated by the beauty of the natural world,he is also labeled as a “nature poet”,as his poems can reveal his ecological consciousness to a certain extent.Based on these characteristics of his poetry,this thesis takes Hughes’ composition order as a clue,selecting his representative works in his early,middle and later periods,and analyzes the formation process of his outlook on nature.Ted Hughes published his first poetry collection The Hawk in the Rain in 1957.In this collection,Hughes expressed his unique attitude towards nature,which caused a sensation in British society and attracted the attention of critics.Over the past six decades,critics have done a lot of research on Hughes’ poetry from the perspectives of religious culture,mythological elements and language style.However,the ecological consciousness implied in his works has not been fully studied yet.Although there have some discussions on the ecological implication in his poems,most studies are limited to a single poem or a single poetry collection,which lack systematicness and integrity.Moreover,many studies only focus on the natural ecology,its impact on humanity and the reconstruction of the imbalanced human-nature relationship are often ignored.This thesis believes that Hughes,taking poetry as the carrier,is committed to reconstructing a new human-nature relationship.From showing human estrangement from nature in his early period to excavating the root of humanity alienation in his middle period,and presenting the ideal state of harmonious coexistence between man and nature in his later works,Hughes’ creative process reflects his gradually mature outlook on nature.This thesis consists of Introduction,Body and Conclusion.The first part includes a brief introduction of Ted Hughes and his poetry,literature review and significance of the study.The main body involves three chapters,which are interconnected and address the issue progressively.In Chapter One,the process of human estrangement from nature is implied by analyzing Hughes’ early poem collections The Hawk in the Rain,Lupercal,Wodwo and Crow with violence as the common theme.In Chapter Two,alienation of humanity caused by human estrangement from nature is discussed by analyzing the most representative collection in Hughes’ middle period,Gaudete.Humanity alienation is specifically shown in three aspects: alienation between man and self,alienation between man and man and alienation between man and society.Then it is argued that anthropocentrism is the root of alienation.In Chapter Three,a harmonious and symbiotic human-nature relationship will be explored through analysis of three works in Hughes’ later period: Remains of Elmet,Wolfwatching and River.Finally,this thesis concludes that Ted Hughes is a poet with strong ecological consciousness.He devoted his whole life to the creation of poems about nature,gradually formed his own outlook on nature in the process of poetic creation and highlighted it in his works.His poems record his footprints in exploring the harmonious relationship between man and nature,trying to make up for human violence against nature under the guidance of anthropocentrism and reverse the alienated human-nature relationship as well as the alienation of humanity.