, THL3703 PORTFOLIO EXAM (COMPLETE ANSWERS)
Semester 2 2025 - DUE 15 October 2025 ; 100% correct
solutions and explanations.
Portfolio Paper
The Interplay of Syntactic and Metaphorical Foregrounding in
Shaping Poetic Meaning
Based on Ted Hughes’s “Sketching a Thatcher”
1. Introduction
Ted Hughes’s poetry is characterised by its dense figurative language
and its striking manipulation of form. In Sketching a Thatcher, Hughes
paints a portrait of an elderly thatcher whose body and work are so
interwoven with nature and tools that he emerges as both man and myth.
The poem relies heavily on foregrounding: the poet disrupts normal
linguistic expectations through syntactic deviation, parallelism, and
cumulative constructions, while simultaneously deploying metaphorical
expressions that equate the thatcher with birds, animals, weather, and
tools.
This paper argues that the interaction between syntactic and
metaphorical foregrounding is central to meaning-making in the
poem. Deviant and patterned syntax compels the reader to pause and
reinterpret, while metaphorical constructions extend and intensify the
portrait. The stylistic analysis, grounded in the theoretical framework of
foregrounding (Leech, 2008; Simpson, 2014), will show how Hughes’s
intra-textual design transforms a labourer into a mythic emblem of
resilience. The analysis will demonstrate how syntactic structures
foreground metaphors, how metaphors depend on syntactic organisation,
and how their interplay guides the reader toward thematic interpretations
of energy, endurance, and natural integration.
Semester 2 2025 - DUE 15 October 2025 ; 100% correct
solutions and explanations.
Portfolio Paper
The Interplay of Syntactic and Metaphorical Foregrounding in
Shaping Poetic Meaning
Based on Ted Hughes’s “Sketching a Thatcher”
1. Introduction
Ted Hughes’s poetry is characterised by its dense figurative language
and its striking manipulation of form. In Sketching a Thatcher, Hughes
paints a portrait of an elderly thatcher whose body and work are so
interwoven with nature and tools that he emerges as both man and myth.
The poem relies heavily on foregrounding: the poet disrupts normal
linguistic expectations through syntactic deviation, parallelism, and
cumulative constructions, while simultaneously deploying metaphorical
expressions that equate the thatcher with birds, animals, weather, and
tools.
This paper argues that the interaction between syntactic and
metaphorical foregrounding is central to meaning-making in the
poem. Deviant and patterned syntax compels the reader to pause and
reinterpret, while metaphorical constructions extend and intensify the
portrait. The stylistic analysis, grounded in the theoretical framework of
foregrounding (Leech, 2008; Simpson, 2014), will show how Hughes’s
intra-textual design transforms a labourer into a mythic emblem of
resilience. The analysis will demonstrate how syntactic structures
foreground metaphors, how metaphors depend on syntactic organisation,
and how their interplay guides the reader toward thematic interpretations
of energy, endurance, and natural integration.
