Ted Hughes: Oedipus Crow

Length / Form 19 lines, free verse

Allusion to Classical figure Uses the image of Oedipus' damaged foot, not the self-blinding

Comment Embeds the figure of Oedipus in the Crow. Linked with ‘Song for a Phallus’ in the same collection (CP p.248-50).

Further Reading

Stuart Hirschberg. Myth in the Poetry of Ted Hughes, Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1981.

Schofield, Annie. ‘The Oedipus theme in Hughes’. Keith Sagar (ed.) The Achievement of Ted    Hughes. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983.

Talbot, John. ‘Eliot’s Seneca, Ted Hughes’s Oedipus.’ Roger Rees (ed). Ted Hughes and the    Classics. Classical Presences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, 62-80.