Atomic Tricksters: Ted Hughes, Allen Ginsberg, Gerald Vizenor

The primary texts explored by this thesis are related in three intersecting ways. Firstly, they are post-nuclear texts responding to the pressures of the nuclear age. Secondly, they draw upon tricksters and trickster figures as a subversive response to nuclearity, used here to describe the multitudinous discourse surrounding the science, usage and fallout (both physical and poetic) of atomic energy. Thirdly, the writing of these tricksters in a nuclear context is in some way informed by the authors’ engagement with the principles of quantum physics. This argument builds upon previous studies that identify the behavioural similarities between trickster figures and subatomic particles in the processes at work in quantum physics. Ted Hughes’s eponymous character in Crow (1971) is a trickster that associates nuclear energy with Cartesian rationalism, whilst drawing upon the language and subversive behaviour of subatomic particles. Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ (1956) and ‘Plutonian Ode' (1978) are post-nuclear Beat poems with subtextual trickster influences and a poetic engagement with the renowned physicists Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg. Gerald Vizenor’s novel Hiroshima Bugi (2003) is set in post-nuclear Hiroshima with a trickster protagonist, and the novel’s connection to quantum physics is further explored with reference to Vizenor’s critical writing. By analysing the presence of atomic tricksters within post-nuclear texts, I consider the trickster as a subversive, creative and transformational response to nuclear trauma. Overall, I ask what it means when a nuclear threat engenders an audience, and what stories are needed to help process and respond to the conditions of a post-nuclear world.