Pagan epic in contemporary British poetry: Hughes and Logue, Ovid and Homer

Holmes, J. (2012) Pagan epic in contemporary British poetry: Hughes and Logue, Ovid and Homer. In: The Epic Expands: Rereading & widening the epic corpus. P.I.E. Peter Lang, Brussels, pp. 343-358. ISBN 9789052018812

Abstract/Summary

In 'Tales from Ovid' and 'War Music' respectively, Ted Hughes and Christopher Logue turned to classical epic as source material and a model for contemporary poetry. In this essay I consider the different ways in which they work with the original epic poems and how they rework them both textually and generically. In the process, I suggest, Hughes gives his readers an Ovid modeled on his own, vatic conception of Homer, while Logue reworks Homer in a manner that is essentially Ovidian.