Dylan Thomas: Regional Writers (2)
- Created by: Alasdair
- Created on: 04-06-18 17:25
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- Dylan Thomas: Regional Writers (2)
- Thomas and Welsh metre
- Thomas was aware of the prominence of features of Welsh metre
- Denied influence in his own work: he claimed that reproducing Welsh metrics and effects in English 'succeeded only in warping, crabbing, and obscuring natural genius of the English language'
- Thomas contradicts himself
- As early as May 1934, Thomas claimed that his genius was 'more or less based on Welsh Rhythms'
- On No Work of Words, 1938
- Mirroring alliteration
- 'The lovely gift of the gab/bangs back on a blind shaft'
- Mirroring alliteration
- According to Katie Grammich
- Dylan Thomas 'retained a strong knowledge of Welsh-language forms and traditions, including folk and chapel culture, and, to some extent, strict metre poetry.
- These poets inhabited a linguistic borderland, therefore, and their work is energised and defamiliarised by the tensions between two languages and two cultures.'
- Thomas was aware of the prominence of features of Welsh metre
- Swansea: hybrid cultures
- Potent legacy in Swansea
- Borders Welsh-Speaking Carmarthenshire to the north and west
- Busy port in 1930s
- Centre for dissenting Non-conformism
- Known for its sporting and theatrical/literary activities
- Linguistic borderland
- Swansea and the War
- Swansea economic decline
- Bombed flat in 1941 ('The Three Night Blitz')
- 'I remember standing there with Caitlin. I was there with a Warden's helmet on, incidentally, and he said "Bert, our Swansea has died. Our Swansea has died."
- 'And by God he was right. The Swansea that that we knew, the pubs, the places were gone, and gone for all time.'
- 'I remember standing there with Caitlin. I was there with a Warden's helmet on, incidentally, and he said "Bert, our Swansea has died. Our Swansea has died."
- 'Return Journey', broadcast in 1947 on the BBC Home Service offers lyrical and extremely detailed account of a narrator travelling through Swansea, Seeking his younger self(ves)
- 'I went out of the hotel into the snow and walked down high street, past the flat white wastes where all the shops had been.'
- 'Eddershaw Furnishers, Curry's Bicycles, Donegal Clothing Company, Doctor Scholl's, Burton Tailors, W. H. Smith, Boots...- all the shops bombed and vanished. Past the hole in space where Hodges & Clothiers had been, down Castle Street, past the remembered, invisible shops'
- Praise poet
- Urgency
- Rhapsodic and formally intricate verse
- Evocation of rural west Wales
- Poet in search of a lost home?
- 'Fern Hill' (1945)
- 'Over Sir John's Hill' (1949)
- 'Fern Hill'
- Fern Hill House in Llangain, Carmathenshire
- Thomas enjoyed extended stays in 1920s
- Fern Hill published in 'Deaths and Entrances' in 1945
- How is Fern Hill described by Thomas?
- What ind of linguistic features can you detect?
- 'Do Not Go Gentle'
- A villanelle
- Originally used for pastoral poetry
- Old French form
- 19 line poem
- 5 tercets, followed by a quatrain
- Two refrains and two repeating rhymes
- The first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately until the last stanza
- The final stanza include both repeated
- Thomas and Welsh metre
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