The Significance of Landscape in the Work of Gwyn Thomas and Ron Berry
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_________________________________________________________________________Swansea University E-Theses The Black Pastures: The significance of landscape in the work of Gwyn Thomas and Ron Berry. Morse, Sarah Elizabeth How to cite: _________________________________________________________________________ Morse, Sarah Elizabeth (2010) The Black Pastures: The significance of landscape in the work of Gwyn Thomas and Ron Berry.. thesis, Swansea University. http://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa42924 Use policy: _________________________________________________________________________ This item is brought to you by Swansea University. Any person downloading material is agreeing to abide by the terms of the repository licence: copies of full text items may be used or reproduced in any format or medium, without prior permission for personal research or study, educational or non-commercial purposes only. The copyright for any work remains with the original author unless otherwise specified. The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holder. Permission for multiple reproductions should be obtained from the original author. Authors are personally responsible for adhering to copyright and publisher restrictions when uploading content to the repository. Please link to the metadata record in the Swansea University repository, Cronfa (link given in the citation reference above.) http://www.swansea.ac.uk/library/researchsupport/ris-support/ The Black Pastures: The significance of landscape in the work of Gwyn Thomas and Ron Berry Sarah Elizabeth Morse Submitted to the University of Wales in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Swansea University 2010 ProQuest Number: 10821314 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10821314 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 l ib r a r y THESIS SUMMARY The Black Pastures: The significance of landscape in the work of Gwyn Thomas and Ron Berry This thesis examines how Gwyn Thomas and Ron Berry interact with and respond to landscape and environment in their fictional and non-fictional writing. Exploring how the writers negotiate the convergence of the industrial and the rural/natural in the uplands of the south Wales coalfield, in particular the Rhondda Fawr Valley, the study considers the literary geographies their work creates. Examining the themes of the cultural and political use of landscape and rural imagery, the manifestation of authority in landscapes, the impact of industrialisation and de-industrialisation, the uncanny underground environment and its dynamic interactions with the ground above, and post-industrial environmental issues, the study re-positions two industrial writers of Wales to reveal the significance of landscape, place and environment in their writing. Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................................... ii List of Abbreviations Used............................................................................................................iii Introduction................................................................................................................ 1 Contested Landscapes: Socio-economic Geographies and Networks of Authority.............................. 19 The Establishment of Industry: the ‘peopling’ of the landscape.............................26 Land, Access and Authority........................................................................................... 40 Moonlea, Mynydd Coch and Meadow Prospect: Gwyn Thomas and the Complex Pastoral.......................................................... 52 The Shepherd.........................................;......................................................................... 59 Back to the Land: Reflections on Retreat....................................................................72 Resolution......................................................................................................................... 89 Uncanny Catastrophes: Landscape, Community and Industrial Disasters .......................... 97 An Industrial Uncanny................................................................................................... 99 Tip-slides and Burial Alive............................................................................................111 Trauma and Testimony................................................................................................. 125 The Black Pastures: Ron Berry’s Ecocentric Writing.......................................................................... 136 Habitat and Histories.....................................................................................................139 The Significance of Inscape: Inner responses to the natural world......................148 Reinhabitation and Reclamation: Recovering the natural and narratives of place.........................................................164 The Industrial Forest: Denaturing the Natural.........................................................175 Conclusion............................................................................................................... 193 Bibliography............................................................................................................ 195 Acknowledgements Many people have supported me during the course of the research and writing of this thesis, and I would like to thank friends and colleagues who have offered very welcome encouragement, advice and cups of tea. I am particularly indebted to my supervisor, Professor M. Wynn Thomas for his encouragement to apply to study for a PhD in the first place, and for his expertise, patience, good humour and his ability to inspire; diolch o galon. I would also like to thank Daniel Williams, Kirsti Bohata, Neal Alexander and Jeni Williams for the many useful conversations shared, and fellow students in CREW for their support, friendship and reassurance. My parents deserve immeasurable thanks for having kept faith that the thesis would, finally, end. And, to Simon Long, my love and thanks for his support, encouragement and kindness. List of Abbreviations Used AFSE: A Few Selected Exits ATBT: All Things Betray Thee AWE: A Welsh Eye BLHM: ‘Below Lord’s Head Mountain’ (Manuscript of unpublished novel) F&S: Flame and Slag FMF: A Frost on My Frolic FTA: The Full Time Amateur HH: Hunters and Hunted HGWMV: How Green Was My Valley HWYL: History Is What You Live PW: Peregrine Watching SFTS: Sorrow For Thy Sons SLHB: So Long Hector Bebb WCHY: The World Cannot Hear You i lie DiaeK. rasiures Introduction ‘Glamorgan as she is: black, green and grey mining villages’1 ‘This black pasture of industrialised Wales’ Ron Berry’s description of south Wales as a ‘black pasture’ goes some way to challenge the stereotyped images of the industrialised coalfield. Although the phrase conjures a spoiled environment it also functions to reassert the connection between mining and the land, a connection that is often obscured. Indeed, it almost prompts images of industry as a form of harvest. But significantly, Berry’s description positions the coalfield as a landscape: it is a place of ‘black, green and grey’, despite the greenness of the area being often overlooked. The concept of the coalfield existing in, or as, a landscape is neglected in many depictions of the area. Rather it is presented as an industrial space apart. But as this study will explore, for both Ron Berry and Gwyn Thomas the landscape and environment of the coalfield are significant in defining their sense of place. In effect, this thesis attempts to answer the following question: what vision (or version) of South Wales do these mid-twentieth-century writers (re)create in their writing? Or, put another way, how is the landscape of South Wales depicted and re imagined in their work? What intersections appear between the geo-historical records and the imagined depictions? Or, again how are the landscapes of their fiction and non fiction constructed, and what do these landscapes reveal? This study is not a comparative study of the writing of Thomas and Berry. Rather, it seeks to investigate how landscape features in their writing, and to what purpose. Indeed, as Matthew Jarvis ' Ron Berry, The Full Time Amateur (London: W.H. Allen, 1966), p. 130 2 Ron Berry, History Is What You Live (Llandysul: Gomer Press, 1998), p.36 i lie Diai/K ra^iuic^ remarked his recent study Welsh Environments in Contemporary Poetry, ‘it might be best to describe what I am trying to achieve in this study as a work of literary geography’.3 That is to say, the thesis traces how the authors use fiction to engage with the earth’s surface: its physical features, its social, cultural and political divisions, its natural environments, and how society interacts with, and uses, it. Before further outlining the argument of the thesis, it is necessary to define what