Chameleon poet : R.S. Thomas and the literary tradition / S.J. Perry.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Perry, S. J., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Thomas, R. S. (Ronald Stuart), 1913-2000--Criticism and interpretation.

Thomas, R. S.

Thomas, R. S. (Ronald Stuart), 1913-2000.

English poetry--Welsh authors--History and criticism.

English poetry.

English poetry--Welsh authors.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

296 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2013.

Summary:

For many decades, R.S. Thomas has been portrayed according to terms that he himself helped to define. Drawing on the poet's status as a passionate defender of the Welsh nation, scholars have followed his lead in emphasizing the Welsh credentials of his work, tacitly affirming his chosen cultural identity. Chameleon Poet, however, goes against the grain of previous studies by revealing Thomas as profoundly indebted to the English literary canon. Ultimately, Thomas emerges as a classic example of what Keats famously described as the chameleon poet', and through this prism S.J. Perry illuminates the various dimensions of Thomas's relationship with the literary tradition, ranging from his early immersion in the work of the English Romantics, to his discovery of Irish and Scottish writing, his response to key poetic figures, such as Herbert, Tennyson, Edward Thomas, and T.S. Eliot, his involvement with the influential journal Critical Quarterly, which inspired a creative dialogue with esteemed contemporaries like Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin, and his late engagement with the traditions of the elegy as conceived within Thomas Hardy's Poems of 1912-13. As well as suggesting new readings and associations, this groundbreaking exposition of R.S. Thomas's art forms part of a wider investigation into the nature of the British poetic tradition and archipelagic identity, showing how Thomas's Welshness was in fact a hybrid construct, emerging from his imaginative interaction with the literary cultures of England, Scotland, and Ireland, as much as those of his homeland. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The Golden Treasury 20

2 Voices from Scotland and Ireland 51

3 The Pastoral Vision 85

4 Coleridgean Difficulties 124

5 The Making of H'm: Ted Hughes and Crow 161

6 The Sublime 206

7 The Elegy 246.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [282]-287) and index.

ISBN:

0199687331

9780199687336

OCLC:

834977937