An 'Anglo Welsh' writer who emerged in the 1930s to considerable acclaim in Wales and London, Glyn Jones was a contemporary and friend of Dylan Thomas. An innovative Welsh Modernist, he found the genres of poetry and the short story best suited to the exhibition of his concise, imagist and often grotesque experimentalism. Unlike Thomas, he wrote two novels, was a 'gentle' satirist of Welsh culture, and was deeply embroiled in the 'post-colonial' cultural conflicts of his nation. Jones struggled to find expression between two languages and worked insistently (often antagonistically) in the Welsh literary scene throughout its most controversial century, when it fought to save the Welsh language and resolve its conflicting cultural factions into a consolidated national identity. Jones was, to adopt the rubric of Bhabha, stranded in the cultural margins at the intersection of the English and Welsh languages, and this thesis situates itself accordingly. The first of six chapters examines the ways in which the Welshlanguage culture of Wales engaged Glyn Jones, and explores how a liminal voice can establish its cultural validity via rewriting autobiography into a 'mythical' history. The second chapter adopts Harold Bloom, the concept of intertext and psychological notions of the 'other', to address Jones's conflicted relationship with Dylan Thomas. The third attempts to analyse his twentieth-century dialogue with Dafydd ap Gwilym as he seeks affirmation from his fourteenth-century double. The fourth continues this 'othering' of Welsh ancients and considers how Wales is refracted in some of his work through the literary excavation of Llywarch Hen, tenth-century defender of his princedom, but willing forfeiter of his sons. The fifth chapter considers how Jones inherited but re-invented the role of the cyfarwydd (storyteller), and the sixth explores how Hen Benillion (Welsh folk poetry) fostered his peculiarly Welsh Modernism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:678531 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Parker, Louise Jane |
| Publisher | Swansea University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa42983 |
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