Module Identifier EN33920  
Module Title THE RISE OF WELSH WRITING IN ENGLISH  
Academic Year 2005/2006  
Co-ordinator Dr Damian Walford Davies  
Semester Intended for use in future years  
Next year offered N/A  
Next semester offered N/A  
Course delivery Seminars / Tutorials   Seminar. (10 x 2 hour seminars)  
Assessment
Assessment TypeAssessment Length/DetailsProportion
Semester Assessment Continuous Assessment: 2 x 2,500 word essays  100%
Supplementary Assessment Resubmit any failed elements and/or make good any missing elements. Where this involves re-submission of work, a new topic must be selected. 

Learning outcomes

At the end of the module, students will be able to:

1. locate and discuss Welsh Writing in English in its cultural and historical context;

2. assess the influence of linguistic, economic, social and political factors on literary texts;

3. examine the tensions inherent in the cultural programme of Welsh Writing in English;

4. examine the way in which these texts interrogate issues of class, gender and national/ linguistic identity;

5. write about literary texts in a critically-focused and well-structured manner.

Brief description

How does a 'new' literature, or a literature in a new language, establish itself side by side with an ancient literary culture? What are the social and economic circumstances of its rise? How do its writers handle their relationship with that older literature with which they must co-exist - and what is their attitude to the dominant culture across the Border, with which they share a common language but not a common history? What tensions arise from class and gender difference, from the impact of the two World Wars, and from the divided loyalties of a newly bilingual nation? In trying to answer these and related questions, this option aims to illustrate a given community and its consciousness of itself at a crucial point in its development.

Content

The module will be taught by means of weekly two-hour seminars. Students are expected to purchase the five texts - by Caradoc Evans, Dylan Thomas, Glyn Jones, Hilda Vaughan and Emyr Humphreys - for which editions are designated (by an *) in the following programme.

Programme

1. A Culture in Transition (3 seminars)

i) Introduction: 'The Anglo-Welsh Ideology'

ii) Rural Revolt

iii) Industrial Revolt

2. Imagined Communities (3 seminars)

i) Myth and War

ii) Green and Nogood Boyos

iii) Community and Loss

3. Nation and Gender (2 seminars)

i) A Passive Resistance

ii) Forging a Female Identity

4. Language Conflicts (2 seminars)

i) Bilingual Identities

ii) 'Border Blues'

Reading Lists

Books
** Should Be Purchased
Caradoc Evans (ed. John Harris) (1997) My People Bridgend: Seren Books
Dylan Thomas (ed. Walford Davies) (2000) Selected Poems Penguin
Glyn Jones (ed. Belinda Humfrey) (1992) The Island of Apples University of Wales Press
Jane Aaron (ed.) (1999) A View Across the Valley: Short Stories by Women from Wales 1800-1950 Honno Press
Emyr Humphreys (ed. M. Wynn Thomas) (1992) A Toy Epic Bridgend: Seren Books
** Recommended Background
John Harris (1994) A Bibliographical Guide to Twenty-Four Modern Anglo-Welsh Writers University of Wales Press
Jeremy Hooker (2001) Imagining Wales: A View of Modern Welsh Writing in English University of Wales Press
Emyr Humphreys (2000) The Taliesin Tradition Bridgend: Seren Books
Glyn Jones (ed. Tony Brown) (2001) The Dragon Has Two Tongues (new edition) University of Wales Press
Sam Adams (ed.) (1998) Seeing Wales Whole: Essays on the Literature of Wales University of Wales Press
Anthony Conran (1982) The Cost of Strangeness: Essays on the English Poets of Wales Gomer Press
Tony Curtis (ed.) (1986) Wales The Imagined Nation: Essays in Cultural and National Identity Poetry Wales Press
Raymond Garlick (1970) An Introduction to Anglo-Welsh Literature University of Wales Press
Jeremy Hooker (1987) The Presence of the Past: Essays on Modern British and American Poetry Poetry Wales Press
I. Hume and W.T.R. Pryce (eds.) (1986) The Welsh and their Country: Selected Readings in the Social Sciences Gomer Press / Open University Press
Belinda Humfrey, ed. (1995) Fire Green as Grass: Studies of the Creative Impulse in Anglo-Welsh Poetry and Short Stories of the Twentieth Century Gomer Press
Roland Mathias (1987) Anglo-Welsh Literature Poetry Wales Press
Roland Mathias (1985) A Ride Through the Woods: Essays on Anglo-Welsh Literature Poetry Wales Press
Kenneth O. Morgan (1981) Rebirth of a Nation: Wales 1880-1980 Clarendon Press and University of Wales Press
M. Wynn Thomas (1992) Internal Difference: Literature in Twentieth-Century Wales University of Wales Press
M. Wynn Thomas (1999) Corresponding Cultures University of Wales Press
Ned Thomas (1991) The Welsh Extremist: A Culture in Crisis (New Edition) Y Lolfa
Anthony Conran (1997) Frontiers in Anglo-Welsh Poetry University of Wales Press
M. Wynn Thomas, 'Hidden Attachments: Aspects of the Relationship Between the Two Literatures of Modern Wales', in Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays 1 (1995), pp.145-163
Saunders Lewis (1939) Is There An Anglo-Welsh Literature? Cardiff: Cardiff Guild of Graduates
Stephen Knight (2004) A Hundred Years of Fiction University of Wales Press
Nigel Jenkins (2001) Footsore on the Frontier: Selected Essays and Articles Gomer Press
John Goodby and Chris Wiggington (eds.) (2001) Dylan Thomas (New Casebook Series) London: Palgrave
Raymond Garlick & Roland Matthias (eds.) (1992) Anglo-Welsh Poetry 1480-1980 Bridgend: Seren
Kirsti Bohata (2004) Postcolonialism Revisited: Writing Wales in English University of Wales Press
See also the various essays in the 8 published volumes of Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, each of which contains John Harris's updated bibliographies of Welsh Writing in English.
R.S. Thomas (ed. and trans. Jason Walford Davies) (1997) Autobiographies London: Dent
M. Wynn Thomas (ed.) (2003) Welsh Writing in English: A Guide Cardiff: University of Wales Press
Gwyn Alf Williams (1985) When Was Wales? Penguin

Notes

This module is at CQFW Level 6