R. S. Thomas: Serial Obsessive [Paperback]

During his lifetime, R. S. Thomas (19132000) achieved notoriety as the Ogre of Wales, a Welsh extremist, and a poet of serial obsessions. This volume explores those elements that fueled Thomass fiercely intense imagination, including Wales, his family, and his vexed relationship with religion, as well as with his best-known character, Iago Prytherch. Here, these familiar obsessions are set in several unusual contexts that bring his poetry into new relief: his war poems are considered alongside his early work focusing on the English topographical tradition; comparisons with Borges and Levertov underline the international dimensions of his concerns; the intriguing secret code of some of his Welsh-language references is cracked; and his painting-poems, including several hitherto unpublished, are brought to the forefront.

M. Wynn Thomasis professor of English and director of the Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales, both at Swansea University, UK.

Acknowledgements
Illustrations
Abbreviations
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’

Index

“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.”

“M. Wynn Thomas circles his subject obsessively, approaching the work of R. S. Thomas in the contexts of its changing times, its gravely playful theological speculations, its dialogue with American verse, its relationshlcW