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Opens up a period in Welsh cultural history that has been almost completely overlooked First monograph to explore Welsh history between 1890-1914
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.
The study places the work of a major religious poet of the late twentieth century in a number of striking new perspectives that allow him to be viewed for the first time as an 'alternative' war poet, a conscience-stricken pacifist, a jealously opportunistic student of art, and an experimental biographer of the modern soul. Published to mark the centenary of the ‘ogre of Wales’, this volume deals with the idées fixes that serially possessed the fiercely intense imagination of R. S. Thomas: Iago Prytherch, Wales, his family and, of course, a vexingly elusive deity. Here, these familiar obsessions are set in several unusual contexts that bring Thomas’s poetry into startling new relief. The war poetry is considered alongside the poet’s early relationship to the English topographical tradition; comparisons with Borges and Levertov underline the international dimensions of the poetry’s concerns; the intriguing ‘secret code’ of some of Thomas’s Welsh-language references is cracked; and his painting-poems (including several hitherto unpublished) are brought centre-stage from the peripheries to which they have been routinely relegated.
The book is the first overview of the long distinguished career of Wales’ leading Welsh-language novelist in its entirety. • A study of Emyr Humphreys who has had a remarkable career spanning over seventy years as a writer, he has published more than two dozen novels (many of them prize-winning), as well as several collection of short stories. • These essays were supplemented by the interviews the author conducted with Emyr Humphreys.
Down the centuries, poets have provided Wales with a window onto its own distinctive world. This book gives a sense of the view seen through that special window in twelve illustrated poems, each bringing very different periods and aspects of the Welsh past into focus. Together, they give the flavour of a poetic tradition, both ancient and modern, in the Welsh language and in English, that is internationally renowned for its distinction and continuing vibrancy.
The twin cultures of Welsh and English in Wales have caused a great deal of discussion and comment. Wynn Thomas explores the relationship between the two cultures in Wales from the 17th century to the present day. He focuses primarily on the linguistic aspects, using examples from Welsh and Anglo-Welsh Literature.
A fascinating and exhilarating look at the many ways we love, and are loved. Following on from his bestselling History of Wales in 12 Poems, M Wynn Thomas turns his attention in A Map of Love to poems from Wales and reflects on what they have to say on the age-old subject of love in its many and varied forms. Featuring twelve pieces dating from the 14th century to the present, this absorbing collection deliberately veers far from clichéd verses with its poems of regret and of mourning; straight love and gay love; bawdy verses of passion and desire, and gentle meditations on motherhood and marriage. It features anonymous and lesser-known writers as well as household names such as Gillian Clarke and R. S. Thomas, and it includes a previously unpublished poem by Emyr Humphreys. With original illustrations by Ruth Jên Evans throughout, this short but powerful collection will appeal to anyone interested in people and their complex relationships.
1. The book is in keeping with contemporary developments in literary criticism and interpretation. 2. The book is the first to offer a comprehensive critical overview of Thomas’s entire output. 3. It provides exciting new commentaries on cultural appropriations and interpretations of Thomas in the media, letters, and popular culture. 4. It contains work by some of the leading voices in the fields of Thomas studies and Welsh Writing in English. 5. It offers key insights into the Welsh contexts of Thomas’s work and legacy.
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Writer versus preacher: this book shows how this struggle has lain at the heart of Welsh writing and culture for the past two hundred years, intimately shaping the English language literature produced by Wales. Starting with a simple explanation of the history and character of Welsh Nonconformity, it traces the growing textual response to Nonconformity’s hegemonic cultural power from the eighteenth century onwards, culminating in twentieth-century writers’ attempts to undermine it by wresting words from the control of the pulpit. It also uncovers a whole new body of nineteenth-century fiction from Wales, and re-defines Dylan Thomas’s debt to his Nonconformist ancestors.