Kertzer, Jonathan M.Kilfoil, Kara2016-03-292016-03-292010-08http://hdl.handle.net/1880/51124Bibliography: p. 329-342Some pages are in colour.This dissertation annotates selected poems from Ted Hughes's (in)famous final collection, Birthday Letters. The biographical, historical and critical research assembled here aims to facilitate a reader's appreciation of these provocative poems concerning Hughes's contentious relationship with his late wife, the American poet Sylvia Plath. This project is a complex exercise in intertextuality: drawing on various sources - texts, diagrams and photographs, interviews and emails - it situates and explicates Hughes's poems. In so doing, it serves both as a practical guide for reading Birthday Letters and as a sustained scholarly engagement with Hughes's attempt to explore the complexities of memory and truth through the lens of poetic and narrative art.viii, 342 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm.engUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.doctoral thesis10.11575/PRISM/20096