Bangor University DOCTOR of PHILOSOPHY Space Beyond Place
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Bangor University DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Space Beyond Place: Welsh Settings in European Fiction, 1900–2010 Les, Christina Award date: 2019 Awarding institution: Bangor University Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 27. Sep. 2021 Space Beyond Place: Welsh Settings in European Fiction, 1900–2010 Christina Les PhD Modern Languages Bangor University Christina Les Welsh Settings in European Fiction, 1900–2010 Abstract This thesis examines the way Wales has been portrayed in European fiction between 1900 and 2010. The research process has revealed that, within seemingly disparate texts, Welsh space appears to be more important than Welsh people, and Wales’s physical presence more prominent than its language, history and culture. There is also duality of place and space in these Welsh settings. Wales as a named, known, bordered entity is superficially present, but through this the protagonists gain access to very different, even otherworldly, surroundings. Wales the place therefore seems to be a portal to a certain kind of space, characterised by otherness, liminality and distance. The protagonists, all mainland Europeans, travel there at a troubled point in their lives, and find their own fears and foreignness reflected and intensified in this strange new environment. The corpus comprises four novels, from Germany (Weder Ebbe noch Flut by Jörg Bernig and Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald), Hungary (A Pendragon Legenda, Antal Szerb) and the Netherlands (De Omweg, Gerbrand Bakker), as well as a short story from Germany (‘Nicht morgen, nicht gestern’, Uwe Timm). The first was published in 1934 (Szerb) and the last in 2010 (Bakker). Welsh settings are used here to access and explore creative space for the imagination, transcendental space above and beyond the familiar, and intimate interior space such as houses and the body. The corpus is therefore approached from a geographical angle, using spatial theories such as psychogeography, Kenneth White’s geopoetics, Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space and Juhani Pallasmaa’s architectural theory. As part of the ‘European Travellers to Wales’ project, which has highlighted an often-overlooked destination in travel writing studies, this thesis aims to show that Wales has unique appeal for European fiction writers, offering an endlessly malleable setting which is right on the edge and ripe for personalisation. 1 Christina Les Welsh Settings in European Fiction, 1900–2010 I hereby declare that this thesis is the results of my own investigations, except where otherwise stated. All other sources are acknowledged by bibliographic references. This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not being concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree unless, as agreed by the University, for approved dual awards. Yr wyf drwy hyn yn datgan mai canlyniad fy ymchwil fy hun yw’r thesis hwn, ac eithrio lle nodir yn wahanol. Caiff ffynonellau eraill eu cydnabod gan droednodiadau yn rhoi cyfeiriadau eglur. Nid yw sylwedd y gwaith hwn wedi cael ei dderbyn o’r blaen ar gyfer unrhyw radd, ac nid yw’n cael ei gyflwyno ar yr un pryd mewn ymgeisiaeth am unrhyw radd oni bai ei fod, fel y cytunwyd gan y Brifysgol, am gymwysterau deuol cymeradwy. 2 Christina Les Welsh Settings in European Fiction, 1900–2010 Contents Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………. 1 Declaration ...........................………………………………………………………. 2 Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………... 4 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………... 5 Chapter 1 — Other Welsh Settings in Fiction Since 1750 ………………….…….. 24 Chapter 2 — A Private Welsh Universe of Personal Obsessions: Antal Szerb, A Pendragon Legenda (1934) ……………………....…. 60 Chapter 3 — The Welsh Edge of the World: Uwe Timm, ‘Nicht morgen, nicht gestern’ (1999) Jörg Bernig, Weder Ebbe noch Flut (2007) ……………………........ 93 Chapter 4 — Welsh Space ‘Beyond the Horizon and “Beneath the Skin”’: W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz (2001) Gerbrand Bakker, De Omweg (2010) ……………………………… 149 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………..…. 220 Bibliography ………………………………………………………… ………….. 230 3 Christina Les Welsh Settings in European Fiction, 1900–2010 Acknowledgements I couldn’t have done this PhD without the support and encouragement of my supervisors at Bangor, Professor Carol Tully and Dr Gillian Jein: thank you both so much. It has been a privilege to be part of the AHRC-funded research project ‘European Travellers to Wales: 1750– 2010’ and to be awarded an AHRC scholarship. I’m grateful for the knowledge and advice of the project’s research team (Dr Heather Williams and Dr Rita Singer at CAWCS, Aberystwyth, and Dr Kathryn Jones at Swansea) and advisory board, especially Professor Robert Evans. Special thanks also to Jörg Bernig and Len Rix, who have been particularly generous with their time and insight. Lastly, a big thank you to my mum, dad and Bill for getting me here. This thesis is for my son, George. 4 Christina Les Welsh Settings in European Fiction, 1900–2010 Introduction This thesis examines the way Wales has been portrayed in European literature, focusing on twentieth- and twenty-first-century fiction. Its aim is to uncover impressions of a previously overlooked and often marginalised nation, and the specific focus on Wales as a setting has sprung from an unexpected common theme in the European corpus: the fact that the physical geography of Wales seems to be more prominent than Welsh people, history or culture. To reflect this, the corpus texts are therefore approached from a geographical angle, using theories of space and place. The corpus of five texts comprises novels from Germany, Hungary and the Netherlands, and a short story from Germany; the earliest text was published in 1934 and the last in 2010. All the protagonists in the five chosen texts, just like the authors, come from continental Europe (Germany, Hungary and the Netherlands). Travelling to Wales from elsewhere, whether as refugees, self-imposed exiles, social misfits or a combination of all three, they are therefore all outsiders in more ways than one. The physical landscape is a stronger presence, and described more often, than the Welsh language, or Welsh culture. Lastly, there is very little interaction between the European characters and local people in the parts of Wales described. The effect of this is that human activity and its importance seem diminished, while non-human aspects of the setting, such as topography, the weather, plants and animals, become more prominent. The result is a curious duality of place and space: Wales as a named, known, bordered entity is superficially present, but through this the protagonists then gain access to very different and even otherworldly surroundings. Wales the place could therefore be seen as a portal to a certain kind of space, characterised by otherness, liminality and distance from all that was previously known and familiar. For the displaced European protagonists, such external strangeness reflects and intensifies their own fears and foreignness. The five works to be discussed, in the following order and with the country and year of first publication, are A Pendragon Legenda [The Pendragon Legend], a novel by Antal Szerb (Hungary, 1934); ‘Nicht morgen, nicht gestern’ [‘Not tomorrow, not yesterday’], a short story by 5 Christina Les Welsh Settings in European Fiction, 1900–2010 Uwe Timm (Germany, 1999); Weder Ebbe noch Flut [Neither High nor Low Tide], a novel by Jörg Bernig (Germany, 2007); Austerlitz, a novel by W.G. Sebald (Germany, 2001); and De Omweg [The Detour], a novel by Gerbrand Bakker (The Netherlands, 2010).1 Highly-regarded translations into English exist for Szerb’s, Sebald’s and Bakker’s texts, all of which have been used in this thesis.2 Two of the translators in question worked very closely with their authors, as was the case for Anthea Bell with Sebald and David Colmer with Bakker, while Len Rix is considered an authority on Szerb’s fiction in both Hungary and the English-speaking world. The considerable scholarship of Colmer and Rix has brought access to interpretations of Wales from cultures and countries which would otherwise have been beyond my language abilities. The range of the corpus seems particularly valuable in the wider context of the European Travellers to Wales project, because the source texts found to date are overwhelmingly written in either French or German.3 There seems to have been little critical interest in the corpus authors’ Welsh connections to date, so this thesis offers new insight in this respect and prepares the ground for further investigations into European literary engagement with Wales. Choosing the Corpus ‘Literary Conceptions of Wales in Europe’ was the original brief for this doctoral project, and the starting point for initial literature searches. This was quickly narrowed down to Welsh settings in twentieth- and twenty-first-century fiction. Fiction was judged likely to yield more examples of Welsh settings than, say, poetry or drama, being more frequently and widely published. More recent texts were also likely to have a bigger online presence than texts from earlier centuries, 1 Antal Szerb, A Pendragon legenda (Budapest: Magvető Könyvkiadó, 1962); Uwe Timm, ‘Nicht morgen, nicht gestern’ in Nicht morgen, nicht gestern (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2001), pp. 25-46; Jörg Bernig, Weder Ebbe noch Flut (Halle (Saale): Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2012); W.