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‘‘The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive’: Dylan Thomas as Surrealist

John Goodby

Dada and Beyond, vol. 2: Dada and its Legacies, Pages: 199 - 223

Swansea University Author: John Goodby

Abstract

Argues that, for all his denials of its influence, Thomas was committed to forging a version of surrealism in his early poetry. Challenging the standard accounts by which British surrealism is reduced to the 'automaticist' strand of the movement, as exemplified by the work of David Gascoyn...

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Published in: Dada and Beyond, vol. 2: Dada and its Legacies
Published: Amsterdam - New York Rodopi Press 2012
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa337
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spelling 2013-09-18T14:26:10.1866589 v2 337 2011-10-01 ‘‘The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive’: Dylan Thomas as Surrealist a342893822b30da6f736641802def9ab John Goodby John Goodby true false 2011-10-01 FGHSS Argues that, for all his denials of its influence, Thomas was committed to forging a version of surrealism in his early poetry. Challenging the standard accounts by which British surrealism is reduced to the 'automaticist' strand of the movement, as exemplified by the work of David Gascoyne - still dominant in contemporary criticism - the chapter argues for greater appreciation of the biomorphic, apocalyptic and visionary neo-romantic version of surrealism. These are shown to owe less to the Paris surrealists than to Joycean experiment and Eugene Jolas's 's 'revolution of the word', and various 'native' precursors such as Gothic, nonsense writing and Blake. Although this point was made by Breton and Herbert Read, it has never been substantiated, as it is here, by a close reading of Thomas's poetry and prose, and its contexts. Those contexts and their outcome - a liminal, hybridised, Anglo-Welsh, gothic-grotesque version of modernism - were what enabled Thomas to create a version of surrealism. The chapter draws on critical theory ranging from Bakhtin to Bataille and Freud in order to make its case, and ends with a test-case of Thomas's deployment of his surrealised, modernism from the margins, the notoriously impenetrable 'Altarwise by owl-light sequence'. Book chapter Dada and Beyond, vol. 2: Dada and its Legacies 199 223 Rodopi Press Amsterdam - New York Surrealism, Dylan Thomas, revolution of the word, Joyce, body, organic, inorganic, metaphor, Freud,pun, polysemy, Gascoyne 1 10 2012 2012-10-01 COLLEGE NANME Humanities and Social Sciences - Faculty COLLEGE CODE FGHSS Swansea University 2013-09-18T14:26:10.1866589 2011-10-01T00:00:00.0000000 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Culture and Communication - English Language, Tesol, Applied Linguistics John Goodby 1
title ‘‘The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive’: Dylan Thomas as Surrealist
spellingShingle ‘‘The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive’: Dylan Thomas as Surrealist
John Goodby
title_short ‘‘The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive’: Dylan Thomas as Surrealist
title_full ‘‘The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive’: Dylan Thomas as Surrealist
title_fullStr ‘‘The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive’: Dylan Thomas as Surrealist
title_full_unstemmed ‘‘The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive’: Dylan Thomas as Surrealist
title_sort ‘‘The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive’: Dylan Thomas as Surrealist
author_id_str_mv a342893822b30da6f736641802def9ab
author_id_fullname_str_mv a342893822b30da6f736641802def9ab_***_John Goodby
author John Goodby
author2 John Goodby
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container_title Dada and Beyond, vol. 2: Dada and its Legacies
container_start_page 199
publishDate 2012
institution Swansea University
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hierarchy_top_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchy_parent_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_parent_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
department_str School of Culture and Communication - English Language, Tesol, Applied Linguistics{{{_:::_}}}Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences{{{_:::_}}}School of Culture and Communication - English Language, Tesol, Applied Linguistics
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description Argues that, for all his denials of its influence, Thomas was committed to forging a version of surrealism in his early poetry. Challenging the standard accounts by which British surrealism is reduced to the 'automaticist' strand of the movement, as exemplified by the work of David Gascoyne - still dominant in contemporary criticism - the chapter argues for greater appreciation of the biomorphic, apocalyptic and visionary neo-romantic version of surrealism. These are shown to owe less to the Paris surrealists than to Joycean experiment and Eugene Jolas's 's 'revolution of the word', and various 'native' precursors such as Gothic, nonsense writing and Blake. Although this point was made by Breton and Herbert Read, it has never been substantiated, as it is here, by a close reading of Thomas's poetry and prose, and its contexts. Those contexts and their outcome - a liminal, hybridised, Anglo-Welsh, gothic-grotesque version of modernism - were what enabled Thomas to create a version of surrealism. The chapter draws on critical theory ranging from Bakhtin to Bataille and Freud in order to make its case, and ends with a test-case of Thomas's deployment of his surrealised, modernism from the margins, the notoriously impenetrable 'Altarwise by owl-light sequence'.
published_date 2012-10-01T03:03:03Z
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score 11.012678

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