New territories in Modernism : Anglophone Welsh writing, 1930-1949

• Main Author: Wainwright, Laura
• Published: Cardiff University 2010
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.551033

This thesis aims to surmount the perennial critical neglect of literary Modernism in Wales through revealing and examining the Welsh Modernism of eight, key Anglophone Welsh writers. In chapters one, two and three, in which I examine work by Gwyn Thomas, Glyn Jones, Idris Davies, David Jones, Lynette Roberts and Vernon Watkins, I demonstrate how, in different ways, the linguistic experimentation of Welsh writers both reflects and constitutes their engagement with the potentially revolutionary, Modernistic conditions generated by unprecedented linguistic, social and cultural change in modern Wales. In chapter four, I draw a comparison between Dylan Thomas's use of rural Carmarthenshire, and Salvador Dalfs use of Cadaques, on the Catalonian coast, to create psycho-geographical spaces of Modernist transgression while in chapter five, I identify and explore similarly combative and progressive Modernist techniques specifically, of the grotesque in the work of Gwyn Thomas and Rhys Davies. I conclude that Welsh writing in English from 1930-1949 saw the emergence of a distinct, Welsh Modernism that challenges conventional literary histories and, in more than one sense, takes Modernism and Modernist studies into new territories.