Ted Hughes and Cambridge

Abstract

A reader of the biographies of Ted Hughes will draw from them a narrative of his time at Cambridge something like this: despite doing badly in the entrance exam he was awarded an Exhibition on the strength of poems submitted by his teacher; as one of a minority of working-class grammar-school boys he was alienated from the social environment of the university; he hated the academic study of literature, which stifled his creativity, and therefore switched to Archaeology and Anthropology for the final year of his degree; despite publishing nothing under his own name while at Cambridge he had a reputation as a poet. This narrative constitutes a ‘myth’ of the creative individual struggling in a hostile academic environment: a romantic myth that suits Hughes’ image as a poet. I will be questioning this myth, arguing that parts of it are demonstrably untrue, and that others don’t necessarily bear the weight of interpretation put on them. This has consequences for the way we regard the relation of Hughes’ poetry to the academy, and more generally of creative writing to criticism.