Embodying Identity

Harri Roberts

Description

Since the time of Freud, some of the most radical innovators within critical theory have stressed the importance of the body and its representation to the constitution of subjectivity. This book explores some of the theoretical debates surrounding the body, and assesses its value as a critical concept, through an analysis of the body’s representation both in Welsh literary texts in English, and discourse about Wales more generally.
Combining psychoanalytic with more culturally orientated approaches to the body, the book offers an historically informed account of the body that analyses its role in the construction and contestation of identity at a cultural as well as individual level, contributing in a new and radical way to the rapidly expanding critical literature concerned with exploring the construction of identity in a Welsh cultural context.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Idioma inglés
• Idioma galés
• Irish
• English
• European
• Welsh
• Scottish
• Wales
• Musique irlandaise
• Anglais

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780708322376
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Postcolonialism Revisited Prelims.qxp 27/07/2004 11:58 Page vi00Prelims22_4_09:Writing WalesinEnglish prelims.qxd 27/04/2009 14:35 Page i
Embodying Identity
Writing Wales in English00Prelims22_4_09:Writing WalesinEnglish prelims.qxd 27/04/2009 14:35 Page ii
CREW series of Critical and Scholarly Studies
General Editor: Professor M. Wynn Thomas (CREW, Swansea
University)
This CREW series is dedicated to Emyr Humphreys, a major figure in
the literary culture of modern Wales, a founding patron of the Centre
for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales, and, along
with Gillian Clarke and Seamus Heaney, one of CREW’s Honorary
Associates. Grateful thanks are due to the late Richard Dynevor for
making this series possible.
Other titles in the series
Stephen Knight, A Hundred Years of Fiction (978-0-7083-1846-1)
Barbara Prys-Williams, Twentieth-Century Autobiography
(978-07083-1891-1)
Kirsti Bohata, Postcolonialism Revisited (978-0-7083-1892-8)
Chris Wigginton, Modernism from the Margins (978-0-7083-1927-7)
Linden Peach, Contemporary Irish and Welsh Women’s Fiction
(978-07083-1998-7)
Sarah Prescott, Eighteenth-Century Writing from Wales: Bards and
Britons (978-0-7083-2053-2)
Hywel Dix, After Raymond Williams: Cultural Materialism and the
BreakUp of Britain (978-0-7083-2153-9)
Matthew Jarvis, Welsh Environments in Contemporary Welsh Poetry
(978-0-7083-2152-2)
Harri Roberts, Embodying Identity: Representations of the Body in Welsh
Literature (978-07083-2169-0)00Prelims22_4_09:Writing WalesinEnglish prelims.qxd 27/04/2009 14:35 Page iii
Embodying Identity
Representations of the Body
in Welsh Literature
Writing Wales in English
HARRI GARROD ROBERTS
UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS
CARDIFF
200900Prelims22_4_09:Writing WalesinEnglish prelims.qxd 27/04/2009 14:35 Page iv
© Harri Garrod Roberts, 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material
form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means
and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this
publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except
in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing
Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS.
Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any
part of this publication should be addressed to The University of Wales Press,
10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff, CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-7083-2169-0
e-ISBN 978-0-7083-2237-6
The right of Harri Garrod Roberts to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77, 78 and 79 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Recommended text
Printed in Wales by Dinefwr Press, Llandybïe00Prelims22_4_09:Writing WalesinEnglish prelims.qxd 27/04/2009 14:35 Page v
CONTENTS
General Editor’s Preface vii
Acknowledgements ix
List of Abbreviations xi
1 Introduction: Theorizing the Body 1
2 Class, Nation and Corporeality in the 1847 Blue Books 20
Report
3 The Body and the Book: Caradoc Evans’s My People 47
4 ‘I give the Border’: Margiad Evans and Wales 70
5 ‘Beating on the jailing slab of the womb’: The Alleged 90
Immaturity of Dylan Thomas
6 ‘[W]hatever / I throw up now is still theirs’: Abjection in 114
R. S. Thomas’s ‘Poetry of Exile’
7 Horror and Wonder: Glyn Jones’s The Valley, the City, 136
the Village and Niall Griffiths’s Grits
Notes 160
Bibliography 182
Index 19100Prelims22_4_09:Writing WalesinEnglish prelims.qxd 27/04/2009 14:35 Page vi00Prelims22_4_09:Writing WalesinEnglish prelims.qxd 27/04/2009 14:35 Page vii
GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE
The aim of this series is to produce a body of scholarly and critical work
that reflects the richness and variety of the English-language literature
of modern Wales. Drawing upon the expertise both of established
specialists and of younger scholars, it will seek to take advantage of the concepts,
models and discourses current in the best contemporary studies to
promote a better understanding of the literature's significance, viewed
not only as an expression of Welsh culture but also as an instance of
modern literatures in English world-wide. In addition, it will seek to make
available the scholarly materials (such as bibliographies) necessary for
this kind of advanced, informed study.
M. Wynn Thomas,
CREW (Centre for Research into the English Literature of Wales)
Swansea University00Prelims22_4_09:Writing WalesinEnglish prelims.qxd 27/04/2009 14:35 Page viii00Prelims22_4_09:Writing WalesinEnglish prelims.qxd 27/04/2009 14:35 Page ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The central idea for this book, along with the literary and socio-textual
analyses that support it, was developed over the course of three years’
doctoral research at the University of Glamorgan between 2001 and
2004; my thanks go out to my supervisor, Professor Jane Aaron, for her
support and encouragement and many helpful suggestions concerning
the direction in which I might pursue my thesis. In the process of
preparing the text for publication, Professor M. Wynn Thomas’s advice
has proved invaluable, as has the support and assistance provided by the
ever helpful Sarah Lewis at the University of Wales Press. There are
many others, too numerous to mention, who have helped shape this
study, but I would like to single out my partner, Tracy, for her love
and forbearance during the year in which I completed the book – and
for not being too disturbed by my obsession with the abject!
Parts of this book have previously appeared, in an earlier form, in the
following publications: Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical
Essays, 7 (2001–2); North American Journal of Welsh Studies, 3, 1 (Winter
2003); and Welsh Writing in English, 11 (2006–7). I am grateful to the
editors of these journals for permission to include within this study
material from these earlier essays.
There are numerous authors, publishers and copyright holders who
need also to be acknowledged. In no particular order, I would like to
thank Niall Griffiths for permission to quote from his novel Grits
(London: Jonathan Cape, 2000); Honno and Parthian for permission
to quote from Margiad Evans’s novels The Wooden Doctor (Dinas
Powys: Honno, 2005) and Country Dance (Cardigan: Parthian, 2006);
Meic Stephens for permission to quote from Glyn Jones, The Valley,
the City, the Village (London: Dent, 1956), © Meic Stephens; Taylor
and Francis Books Ltd for permission to quote from Homi Bhabha, The
Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); Columbia University
Press for permission to quote from Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror:
An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia00Prelims22_4_09:Writing WalesinEnglish prelims.qxd 27/04/2009 14:35 Page x
x EMBODYING IDENTITY
University Press, 1982), © Columbia University Press; David Highham
Associates for permission to quote from Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems
1934–53 (London: Everyman, 1993); and Gwydion Thomas for
permission to quote from a number of R. S. Thomas’s poems (© Kunjuna
Thomas 2001): ‘Confessions of an Anglo-Welshman’, Wales, 2 (1943),
49; ‘It Hurts Him To Think’, from What is a Welshman? (Llandybïe:
Christopher Davies, 1974), p. 12; ‘Toast’ and ‘Saunders Lewis’, from
Welsh Airs (Bridgend: Poetry Wales Press, 1987), pp. 37 and 44
respectively; ‘Welsh’, ‘Welcome’, ‘A Country’ and ‘The Patriot’, from The Bread
of Truth (London: Hart-Davis, 1963), pp. 15, 24, 30 and 47
respectively; ‘Border Blues’, from Poetry for Supper (London: Hart-Davis, 1958),
p. 10; ‘Reservoirs’, from Not That He Brought Flowers (London:
HartDavis, 1968), p. 26 – as well as extracts from Thomas’s autobiography
Neb (Caernarfon: Gwasg Gwynedd, 1985) and the essays ‘The Creative
Writer’s Suicide’ and ‘Anglo-Welsh Literature’ from his Selected Prose
(Bridgend: Poetry Wales Press, 1983). While every effort has been made
to contact copyright holders, it is inevitable that some omissions will have
been made and, for these, the author and publisher apologize sincerely.00Prelims22_4_09:Writing WalesinEnglish prelims.qxd 27/04/2009 14:35 Page xi
ABBREVIATIONS
References to the following texts occur in abbreviated form within the
main body of the book. The abbreviations, and the texts to which they
refer, are listed here alphabetically:
CD Margiad Evans, Country Dance [1932] (Cardigan: Parthian,
2006).
DN Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the novel’ [1934–5], in Michael
Holquist (ed.), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M.
Bakhtin, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 259–422.
DT Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems 1934–53, Walford Davies and
Ralph Maud (eds) [1988] (London: Everyman, 1993).
Gr Niall Griffiths, Grits (London: Jonathan Cape, 2000).
HS Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge: The History of
Sexuality: 1 [1976], trans. Robert Hurley [1978] (London:
Penguin, 1998).
LBB Gwyneth Tyson Roberts, The Language of the Blue Books: The
Perfect Instrument of Empire (Cardiff: University of Wales Press,
1998).
LC Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge,
1994).
MP Caradoc Evans, My People [1915], John Harris (ed.) (Bridgend:
Seren, 1987).
Neb R. S. Thomas, Neb (Caernarfon: Gwasg Gwynedd, 1985).
PH Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection [1980],
trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press,
1982).
RW Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World [1965], trans. Hélène
Iswolsky [1968] (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).00Prelims22_4_09:Writing WalesinEnglish prelims.qxd 27/04/2009 14:35 Page xii
xii EMBODYING IDENTITY
SPr R. S. Thomas, Selected Prose, Sandra Anstey (ed.) (Bridgend:
Poetry Wales Press, 1983).
VCV Glyn Jones, The Valley, the City, the Village (London: Dent,
1956).
WD Margiad