Quarreling with the Outside Weathers: Dylan Thomas and Surrealism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.199911257Abstract
This essay challenges the traditional readings of Dylan Thomas. Rather than figuring Thomas as a regional romantic, a bardic other to modernism and the Audenesque, it focuses upon the modernist and particularly surrealist elements in his work. It considers in detail a number of poems that deal with the limitations of representation and language in order to suggest that Thomas may be read in a more complex way than has hitherto been the case. It asks that surrealism be recognized as a politicized aesthetic response to crises of the period, and calls for a rethinking of the work of Dylan Thomas in the light of those newer theoretical responses that have emerged since his death.
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