Module Identifier EN33930  
Module Title THE RISE OF WELSH WRITING IN ENGLISH  
Academic Year 2006/2007  
Co-ordinator Dr Damian Walford Davies  
Semester Semester 2  
Course delivery Seminars / Tutorials   20 Hours. Seminar. (10 x 2 hour seminars)  
Assessment
Assessment TypeAssessment Length/DetailsProportion
Semester Assessment Continuous Assessment: 2 x 3000 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 cultural, social and political circumstances of its rise? What issues of cultural and national identity are at stake for the writers of this new literature? What is their attitude to the dominant culture across the Border, with which they share a common language but not a common history/culture? What tensions arise from class and gender difference, from the impact of two World Wars, and from the divided loyalties - the 'hyphenated existence' - of the bilingual subject? These issues are part of an ongoing debate in contemporary, post-Devolution Wales. By focusing on a representative collection of texts written out of Wales and the Welsh experience (both rural and (post-)industrial, from all four compass points) during the twentieth century, this module offers a dramatic portrait of a nation at a crucial juncture in its cultural and political development.

Content

The module will be taught by means of weekly two-hour seminars. Students are expected to purchase the texts asterisked below.

Programme

A Culture in Transition
1. Introduction: Problems of Identity and 'The Anglo-Welsh Ideology'.
2. Rural Rebel: *Caradoc Evans, 'My People', ed. John Harris (Seren Press, reprinted 2002).
3. Industrial Voices: Idris Davies, 'Gwalia Deserta' (1938) and 'The Angry Summer' (1943).

Imagined Communities
4. 'Home Thoughts from Abroad': The Poetry of Alun Lewis.
5. Green and Nogood Boyos: The Poetry of Dylan Thomas, from *Dylan Thomas, 'Selected Poems', ed. Walford Davies (Penguin 2000).
6. Community, Industry, Myth: *Glyn Jones, 'The Island of Apples', ed. Belinda Humfrey (University of Wales Press, 1992).

Nation and Gender
7. Gender, Power and Nonconformity: *'Hilda Vaughan, A Thing of Nought, in A View Across the Valley: Short Stories by Women from Wales, 1800-1950', ed. Jane Aaron (Honno, 1999).
8. Forging a Female Identity: selected short stories and poems by Dorothy Edwards, Dilys Rowe, Lynette Roberts, Jean Earle and Gillian Clarke.

Language Conflicts
9. Bilingual Identities: *Emyr Humphreys, 'A Toy Epic', ed. M. Wynn Thomas (Seren, 1989).
10. 'Border Blues': selected poems by R. S. Thomas.

Notes

This module is at CQFW Level 6