R. S. Thomas to Rowan Williams
The Spiritual Imagination in Modern Welsh Poetry
Author(s) M. Wynn Thomas
Language: English
Genre(s): Literary Criticism
Series: Writing Wales in English
- November 2022 · 312 pages ·216x138mm
- · Paperback - 9781786839466
- · eBook - pdf - 9781786839473
- · eBook - epub - 9781786839480
About The Book
The great religious poetry of R. S. Thomas and the poetry of the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is rooted in a remarkable late-twentieth-century tradition of spiritual poetry in Wales that includes figures as different as Saunders Lewis and Vernon Watkins, Waldo Williams and Bobi Jones. Examining this body of work in detail, the present study demonstrates how the different theological outlooks of the poets was reflected in their choice of form, style and vocabulary, highlighting a literary culture that was highly unusual in its rejection of a prevailing secularisation in the UK, Western Europe and the USA.
Endorsements
‘The range and depth of the author’s knowledge of the literature around these poets, combined with his own perceptive and illuminating insights, is breathtaking. He places them in their particular Welsh historical contexts, and also in a much wider poetic framework, enabling us to see them in new and fresh ways.’
Barry Morgan, Archbishop of Wales 2003–17
‘The Welsh poetic tradition continues to remind us that our general language today is much more secularised than our inner lives happen to be. With an incomparable knowledge of this tradition, M. Wynn Thomas shows us what happens to belief in contemporary times when it becomes a poem. He also reveals how poems can be vehicles for a religious resonance when doctrinal or liturgical language is faint, fractured or forgotten. I finished reading and immediately started again – this is a glorious celebration of Wales, poetic attention, and the persistent riddles and rumour of God.’
The Revd Dr Mark Oakley, Dean, St John’s College, Cambridge
‘With customary brilliance, M. Wynn Thomas has provided us with a fascinating assessment of “one of the glories of recent Welsh poetry”, namely the Christian content of mid- to late-twentieth-century verse in the two languages of Wales, as expressed by some of its most significant poets. Beginning with Saunders Lewis and concluding with Rowan Williams, Thomas analyses “a ‘Great Tradition’ of twentieth century Welsh writing”, which, however unfashionable, still speaks powerfully to a secular generation.’
D. Densil Morgan, Emeritus Professor of Theology, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Lampeter
Contents
1. Introduction: An Unfashionable Tradition
2. ‘Traffic-less Emmaeus’: Saunders Lewis
3. ‘The flashed mystery of the moving world’: Vernon Watkins
4. ‘Enfysu’/ Rainbowing: Euros Bowen
5. Gwenallt: the Hieronymous Bosch of Wales
6. Waldo Williams: King in Exile
7. Bobi Jones: Court Poet to the Almighty
8. Three Poets
9. R.S.Thomas and the Tradition
10. Epilogue: the Case of Rowan Williams