R.S. Thomas
Serial Obsessive
Published on 28. February 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-0-7083-2613-8 (ISBN)
Description
The study places the work of a major religious poet of the late twentieth century in a number of striking new perspectives that allow him to be viewed for the first time as an 'alternative' war poet, a conscience-stricken pacifist, a jealously opportunistic student of art, and an experimental biographer of the modern soul. Published to mark the centenary of the 'ogre of Wales', this volume deals with the idees fixes that serially possessed the fiercely intense imagination of R. S. Thomas: Iago Prytherch, Wales, his family and, of course, a vexingly elusive deity. Here, these familiar obsessions are set in several unusual contexts that bring Thomas's poetry into startling new relief. The war poetry is considered alongside the poet's early relationship to the English topographical tradition; comparisons with Borges and Levertov underline the international dimensions of the poetry's concerns; the intriguing 'secret code' of some of Thomas's Welsh-language references is cracked; and his painting-poems (including several hitherto unpublished) are brought centre-stage from the peripheries to which they have been routinely relegated.
Reviews / Votes
This previously uncollected collection of essays on R. S. Thomas illustrates, once again, that M. Wynn Thomas has continued to be what he has been from the beginning - R. S. Thomas's finest critic. Professor William Davis, Baylor University, Texas M. Wynn Thomas circles his subject obsessively, approaching the work of R. S. Thomas in the contexts in turn of its changing times, its gravely playful theological speculations, its dialogue with American verse, its relationship to painting, and much else besides. The result is a cubist portrait of the artist and his work, a seeing-round-corners miracle of insight and illumination. R.S. Thomas is presented less in the round than the polyhedron, the kinks, angles and many faces of his profound and sometimes difficult poetry brought suddenly into the light by a formidably learned and delicate intelligence. Professor Thomas moves gracefully between the two literatures of Wales - his chapter on the clergyman poet's debt to the example of Saunders Lewis is a tour-de-force of trans-lingual subtlety - and between Welsh and international perspectives. R. S. Thomas: Serial Obsessive must be counted an indispensable book for anyone interested in modern poetry or modern Wales. Professor Patrick Crotty, the University of AberdeenMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Wales
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Not illustrated
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
599 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7083-2613-8 (9780708326138)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
02/2013
1st Edition
University of Wales Press
from
€177.89
Available for download
E-Book
02/2013
1st Edition
University of Wales Press
from
€177.89
Available for download
Person
M. Wynn Thomas is Emyr Humphreys Professor of English at Swansea University. A Fellow of the British Academy, he has published twenty books on American poetry and on the two literatures of Wales.
Content
Introduction 1 War Poet 2 For Wales See Landscape 3 The disappearing clergyman 4 Son of Saunders 5 Family Matters 6 The leper of Abercuawg 7 Irony in the soul: R. (S)ocrates Thomas 8 Time's Changeling 9 The Fantastic Side of God 10 Transatlantic Relations 11 The Fast-Dipping Brush 12 The brush's piety