Roald Dahl

Wales of the Unexpected

Editor(s) Damian Walford Davies

Language: English

Genre(s): Literary Criticism, Welsh Interest

  • August 2016 · 224 pages ·216x138mm

  • · Paperback - 9781783169405
  • · eBook - pdf - 9781783169412
  • · eBook - epub - 9781783169429

About The Book

Published to mark the centenary of Roald Dahl’s (Welsh) birth, Roald Dahl: Wales of the Unexpected breaks new ground by revealing the place of Wales in the imagination of the writer known as ‘the world’s number one storyteller’. Exploring the complex conditioning presence of Wales in his life and work, the essays in this collection dramatically defamiliarise Dahl and in the process render him uncanny. Importantly, Dahl is encountered whole – his books for children and his fiction for adults are read as mutually invigorating bodies of work, both of which evidence the ways in which Wales, and the author’s Anglo-Welsh orientation, demand articulation throughout the career. Recognising the impossibility of constructing a monolithic ‘Welsh’ Dahl, the contributors explore the compound and nuanced ways in which Wales signifies across the oeuvre. Roald Dahl: Wales of the Unexpected takes Dahl studies into new territory in terms of both subject and method, showing the new horizons that open up when Dahl is read through a Welsh lens. Locating Dahl in illuminating new textual networks, resourcefully offering fresh angles of entry into classic Dahl texts, rehabilitating neglected Dahl texts, and analysing the layered genesis of (seemingly) familiar works by excavating the manuscripts, this innovative volume brings Dahl ‘home’ in order to render him invigoratingly unhomely. The result is not a parochialisation of Dahl, but rather a new internationalisation.

Endorsements

‘Through the powerfully formative lens of Wales, the essays in this highly original and imaginative collection demonstrate the extent to which Dahl’s later development, as both writer and person, was shaped by his Welsh upbringing.’
-David Rudd, Professor of Children's Literature, University of Roehampton

‘An intriguing and readable collection of essays that shines remarkable light into Roald Dahl’s complex and unexpected Welsh hinterland.’
-Donald Sturrock, Dahl’s official biographer

Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
‘Inscription and Erasure: Mining for Welsh Dahl in the Archive’ – Carrie Smith
‘How Sweet Was My Valley: Willy Wonka and the Welsh Industrial Novel’ – Tomos Owen
'Wales of the Unexpected: Kiss, Kiss' – Kevin Mills
‘Homes, Horizons and Orbits: Welsh Dahl and the Aerial View’ – Richard Marggraf Turley
‘Dahl and Dylan: Matilda, ‘In Country Sleep’ and Twentieth-century Topographies of Fear’ – Damian Walford Davies
‘‘There’s Something Fishy about Wales’: Dahl, Identity, Language’ – Ann Alston and Heather Worthington
‘Dahl-in-Welsh, Welsh Dahl: Translation, Resemblance, Difference’ – Siwan Rosser
‘Dahl’s Cardiff Spaces’ – Peter Finch

About the Editor(s)

Author(s): Damian Walford Davies

Damian Walford Davies is Professor of English and Head of the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University.

Read more