University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Master's Theses Student Research 1971 Images of creation and destruction in the early poetry of Dylan Thomas Willard Liston Rudd Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/masters-theses Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Rudd, Willard Liston, "Images of creation and destruction in the early poetry of Dylan Thomas" (1971). Master's Theses. Paper 1050. This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Research at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. IMAGES OF CREATION AND DESTRUCTION IN THE EARLY POETRY OF DYLAN THOMAS BY WILLARD LISTON RUDD A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH AUGUST 1971 Approved: INTRODUCTION In a much quoted letter to Henry Treece, Dylan Thomas presented his views on the importance of imagery in his early poetry. 1 A poem by me needs a host of images. I make one image - though "make" is not the word; I let, perhaps, an image be "made" emotionally in me and then apply to it what intellectual and critical forces I possess; let it breed another, let that image contradict the first; make of the third image, bred out of the two together, a fourth contradictory image, and let them all, within my imposed formal limits, con