All That Is Wales

M. Wynn Thomas

Description

Wales may be small, but culturally it is richly varied. The aim in this collection of essays on a number of English-language authors from Wales is to offer a sample of the country’s internal diversity. To that end, the author’s examined range – from the exotic Lynette Roberts (Argentinean by birth, but of Welsh descent) and the English-born Peggy Ann Whistler who opted for new, Welsh identity as ‘Margiad Evans’, to Nigel Heseltine, whose bizarre stories of the antics of the decaying squierarchy of the Welsh border country remain largely unknown, and the Utah-based poet Leslie Norris, who brings out the bicultural character of Wales in his Welsh-English translations. The result is a portrait of Wales as a ‘micro-cosmopolitan country’, and the volume is prefaced with an autobiographical essay by one of the leading specialists in the field, authoritatively tracing the steady growth over recent decades of serious, informed and sustained study of what is a major achievement of Welsh culture.

Introduction
1 The Scarlet Woman: Lynette Roberts
2 Margiad Evans and Eudora Welty: a confluence of imaginations
3 ‘A Grand Harlequinade’: the border writing of Nigel Heseltine
4 ‘There’s words’: Dylan Thomas, Swansea and Language
5 ‘A vast assemblage of unease’: Emyr Humphreys’s A Man’s Estate
6 Outside the House of Baal: the evolution of a major novel
7 ‘Yr Hen Fam’: R. S. Thomas and the Church in Wales
8 R. S. Thomas, ‘Retired Christian’
9 Vernon Watkins, Taliesin in Gower
10 ‘Dubious Affinities’: Leslie Norris’s Welsh-English translations
11 Staying to mind things; Gillian Clarke’s early poetry

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Irish
• English
• European
• Welsh
• Scottish

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 05 mai 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786830906
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

e
All that is Wales
Writing Wales in nglish
00 PRELIMS All that is Wales 2017_4_12.indd 1 12-Apr-17 10:58:14 AMCREW series of Critical and Scholarly Studies
General Editors: Kirsti Bohata and Daniel G. Williams (CREW, Swansea
University)
This CREW series is dedicated to Emyr Humphreys, a major fgure in the
literary culture of modern Wales, a founding patron of the Centre for Research
into the English Literature and Language of Wales. Grateful thanks are due
to the late Richard Dynevor for making this series possible.
Other titles in the series
Stephen Knight, A Hundred Years of Fiction (978-0-7083-1846-1)
Barbara Prys-Williams, Twentieth-Century Autobiography (978-0-7083-1891-1)
Kirsti Bohata, Postcolonialism Revisited (978-0-7083-1892-8)
Chris Wigginton, Modernism from the Margins (978-0-7083-1927-7)
Linden Peach, Contemporary Irish and Welsh Women’s Fiction (978-0-7083-1998-7)
Sarah Prescott, Eighteenth-Century Writing from Wales: Bards and Britons
(978-0-7083-2053-2)
Hywel Dix, After Raymond Williams: Cultural Materialism and the Break-Up of Britain
(978-0-7083-2153-9)
Matthew Jarvis, Welsh Environments in Contemporary Welsh Poetry (978-0-7083-2152-2)
Harri Garrod Roberts, Embodying Identity: Representations of the Body in Welsh
Literature (978-0-7083-2169-0)
Diane Green, Emyr Humphreys: A Postcolonial Novelist (978-0-7083-2217-8)
M. Wynn Thomas, In the Shadow of the Pulpit: Literature and Nonconformist Wales
(978-0-7083-2225-3)
Linden Peach, The Fiction of Emyr Humphreys: Contemporary Critical Perspectives
(978-0-7083-2216-1)
Daniel Westover, R. S. Thomas: A Stylistic Biography (978-0-7083-2413-4)
Jasmine Donahaye, Whose People? Wales, Israel, Palestine (978-0-7083-2483-7)
Judy Kendall, Edward Thomas: The Origins of His Poetry (978-0-7083-2403-5)
Damian Walford Davies, Cartographies of Culture: New Geographies of Welsh Writing in
English (978-0-7083-2476-9)
Daniel G. Williams, Black Skin, Blue Books: African Americans and Wales 1845–1945
(978-0-7083-1987-1)
Andrew Webb, Edward Thomas and World Literary Studies: Wales, Anglocentrism and English
Literature (978-0-7083-2622-0)
Alyce von Rothkirch, J. O. Francis, realist drama and ethics: Culture, place and nation
(978-1-7831-6070-9)
Rhian Barfoot, Liberating Dylan Thomas: Rescuing a Poet from Psycho-Sexual Servitude
(978-1-7831-6184-3)
Daniel G. Williams, Wales Unchained: Literature, Politics and Identity in the American
Century (978-1-7831-6212-3)
M. Wynn Thomas, The Nations of Wales 1890–1914 (978-1-78316-837-8)
Richard McLauchlan, Saturday’s Silence: R. S. Thomas and Paschal Reading
(978-1-7831-6920-7)
Bethan M. Jenkins, Between Wales and England: Anglophone Welsh Writing of the
Eighteenth Century (978-1-7868-3029-6)
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All that is Wales
The Collected Essays of
M. Wynn Thomas
Writing Wales in nglish
UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS
2017
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium
by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to
some other use of this publication) without the written permission
of the copyright owner. Applications for the copyright owner’s
written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should
be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk,
Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library CIP Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-7868-3088-3
978-1-7868-3089-0
eISBN 978-1-7868-3090-6
The right of M. Wynn Thomas to be identifed as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham,
Wiltshire
Typeset in Wales by Eira Fenn Gaunt, Cardiff
Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Melksham
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Er cof am fy mam
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Contents
Series Editors’ Preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: Microcosmopolitan Wales 1
1 The Scarlet Woman: Lynette Roberts 31
2 Margiad Evans and Eudora Welty: A Confuence
of Imaginations55
3 ‘A Grand Harlequinade’: The Border Writing of
Nigel Heseltine 77
4 ‘There’s words’: Dylan Thomas, Swansea and
Language 99
5 ‘A huge assembling of unease’: Readings in
A Man’s Estate 117
6 Outside the House of Baal: The Evolution of a
Major Novel143
7 ‘Yr Hen Fam’: R. S. Thomas and the Church in Wales 165
8 R. S. Thomas: ‘A Retired Christian’ 185
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10 ‘Dubious affnities’: Leslie Norris’s Welsh–English
Translations 233
11 ‘Staying to mind things’: Gillian Clarke’s Early Poetry 257
Index 279
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Series Editors’ Preface
The aim of this series, since its founding in 2004 by Professor M. Wynn
Thomas, is to publish scholarly and critical work by established
specialists and younger scholars that refects the richness and variety
of the English-language literature of modern Wales. The studies
published so far have amply demonstrated that concepts, models and
discourses current in the best contemporary studies can illuminate
aspects of Welsh culture, and have also foregrounded the potential
of the Welsh example to draw attention to themes that are often
neglected or marginalised in anglophone cultural studies. The series
defnes and explores that which distinguishes Wales’s anglophone
literature, challenges critics to develop methods and approaches
adequate to the task of interpreting Welsh culture, and invites its
readers to locate the process of writing Wales in English within
comparative and transnational contexts.
Professor Kirsti Bohata and Professor Daniel G. Williams
Founding Editor: Professor M. Wynn Thomas (2004–15)
CREW (Centre for Research into the English
Literature and Language of Wales)
Swansea University
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Acknowledgements
Most of the essays in All that is Wales have been previously published
over the last two decades in a range of publications, the details of
which have been carefully recorded at the conclusion of each piece. I
am very grateful indeed to all concerned for permission to reprint
here, as I am to the many authors and publishers the particulars of
whose works have been duly cited throughout in my textual notes.
Yet again, thanks beyond measure go to the wholly indispensable
University of Wales Press, and most particularly to the following
members of staff with whom I have liaised so proftably closely: Sarah
Lewis, Helgard Krause, Siân Chapman, Dafydd Jones, Elin Williams,
Elisabeth Edwards and Eira Fenn Gaunt. And, of course, friends and
colleagues such as Helen Vendler, Tony Brown, Neil Reeve, Glyn
Pursglove, Kirsti Bohata and Daniel Williams, who share my interests
and have provided me with invaluable companionship and intellectual
sustenance:
As always, the present volume is, in its way, as much the product
of my close family – Karen, Elin, Bob and, yes, little Joseph and littler
Elliott too – as it is my ‘own’ work.
But in the end this book – probably one of my last – is – indeed had
to be – dedicated to the memory of my mother, who sadly died (as
did my beloved father so very much earlier) before any publications
of mine had seen the light of day. In my end is my beginning. But for
my mother’s unstinting devotion, long outlasting my childhood and
adolescence, I am acutely conscious I would have come to nothing:
in her beginning, therefore, was this my end.
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The University of Wales Press gratefully acknowledges permissions
granted for use of the following materials:
New Directions Publishing Corp., for the following works by Dylan
Thomas:
‘The Peaches’, ‘Old Garbo’ and ‘Return Journey’ by Dylan Thomas,
from The Collected Stories of Dylan Thomas, copyright © 1940 by
New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New
Directions Pub.
‘After the Funeral’ by Dylan Thomas, from The Poems of Dylan
Thomas, copyright © 1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp.
Reprinted by permission of New Dir.
‘The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower’ and
‘Especially When the October Wind’ by Dylan Thomas, from The
Poems of Dylan Thomas, copyright © 1939 by New Directions
Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions
Publishing Corp.
‘The Hunchback in the Park’ by Dylan Thomas, from The Poems
of Dylan Thomas, copyright © 1943 by New Directions Publishing
Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas, from
The Poems of Dylan Thomas, copyright © 1952 by Dylan Thomas.
Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
David Higham, for the writings and poetry of Dylan Thomas in the
following works:
Walford Davies (ed.), Dylan Thomas: Early Prose Writings (London:
Dent, 1971).
Paul Ferris (ed.), Dylan Thomas: The Collected Letters (London:
Dent, 1985).
Walford Davies and Ralph Maud (eds), Dylan Thomas: Collected
Poems 1934–1953 (London: Dent, 1988).
Dylan Thomas, Quite Early One Morning: Poems, Stories, Essays
(London: Dent, 1974).
Leslie Norris (ed.), Dylan Thomas: The Collected Stories (London:
Dent, 1983).
Vernon Watkins, Dylan Thomas: Letters to Vernon Watkins (London:
Dent, 1957).
The Dylan Thomas Omnibus, Under Milk Wood, Poems, Stories and
Broadcasts (London: Phoenix, 2000).
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Carcanet Press Limited, f