The Library
‘His country...not the country he had fought for’ : British literatures and world lit. theory : the case of Edward Thomas
Tools
Webb, Andrew (Andrew S.) (2010) ‘His country...not the country he had fought for’ : British literatures and world lit. theory : the case of Edward Thomas. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
Research output not available from this repository.
Request-a-Copy directly from author or use local Library Get it For Me service.
Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2339999~S15
Abstract
My Ph.D. is an intervention on three levels: it works on the theoretical level as an
investigation into the usefulness of Pascale Casanova’s theory of world literature;
it sheds new light on the relation between Welsh and Anglocentric British
literary spaces in the twentieth century; and it radically re-positions Edward
Thomas, the ‘quintessential English poet’, as a pioneering writer in an
Anglophone Welsh literature.
This dissertation begins by setting out some revisions to Casanova’s model
before investigating whether this modified theory can be applied to dominant and
dominated literatures within Britain. Subsequent chapters provide a case-history
of how this might be achieved by focusing on Thomas, a figure of division
among Welsh and English critics alike. While Welsh critics, for various reasons,
have failed to claim Thomas for their literature, other, non-Welsh, critics have
placed him in an English tradition. These include Robert Frost and Walter De la
Mare, both of whom read his work as a representation of the rural England for
which he supposedly died, as well as Edna Longley who, following a critical line
initially developed by Philip Larkin, presents Thomas’s poetry as the ‘missing
link’ in a native English poetic tradition.
By bringing to light Thomas’s literary journalism, mainly out of print since it
was written, as well as biographical factors long obscured behind the focus on his
death as a British soldier, I am able to show how Casanova’s revised model,
when applied to Thomas, reveals a radically different writer to the one who has
been critically received. Thomas, I contend, should be read as an English-language
Welsh writer who dissimilates from an anglicized British literary space
by disseminating Welsh folk material to a wider audience, by promoting writers
from other English-language national traditions, by importing French literary
models into his work, by defending gay writers in the post-Wilde trial era, and by
subverting the Englishness of typical rural locales. Re-positioning the
‘quintessentially English’ Thomas makes more urgent the question that some
critics have begun to address: of what will a post-imperial, or even a post-British,
English identity consist?
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PR English literature | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Thomas, Edward, 1878-1917 -- Criticism and interpretation, English poetry -- Welsh authors, Welsh literature -- 20th century, Literature -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc. | ||||
Official Date: | February 2010 | ||||
Dates: |
|
||||
Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Treglown, Jeremy | ||||
Sponsors: | University of Warwick | ||||
Extent: | v, 289 leaves | ||||
Language: | eng |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |