Paul Bentley is lecturer in literary studies at the University College of St. Mark & St. John, Plymouth.

• Acknowledgements Introduction Hughes and the movement The East European Influence Hughes and Myth Hughes and Shamanism 1. EARLY HUGHES 'Archaic Energies'; Language, Narcissism and Emptiness; 'A Utility General-Purpose Style'; The Influence of Sylvia Plath; Hughes and Romanticism; Language and Mysticism 2. CROW Carnival and Trickster; The 'Dialogic' Word; Through the Looking Glass; Depression: A Style; 3. GAUDETE 'Some Kind of Tunnel'; Lens and Landscape; The Use of Stereotypes; The Double; Language and the Double; 'Adventure Time' in Gaudete; The Double's Defeat; The Language of Gaudete; The Grotesque of Gaudete; The Epilogue Poems and the 'Future Anterior' 4. CAVE BIRDS A Transformation Mystery; Lacan and Jung; The Semiotic and the Symbolic; The Hermetic Vessel as Semiotic Chora; The Shamanic Event; The Discourse of Depression; The Problem of the Feminine 5. LATER HUGHES The Real as Obstacle; The Real as Trauma; The Photograph as Real; An 'Internally Persuasive Discourse'; The Imaginary-Real 6. HUGHES AS LAUREATE Index