Welsh Writing in English: Case Studies in Cultural Interaction
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_________________________________________________________________________Swansea University E-Theses Welsh writing in English: Case studies in cultural interaction. Evans, Gareth Ian How to cite: _________________________________________________________________________ Evans, Gareth Ian (2012) Welsh writing in English: Case studies in cultural interaction.. thesis, Swansea University. http://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa42616 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/ Welsh Writing in English: Case Studies in Cultural Interaction Gareth Ian Evans Submitted to the University of Wales in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Swansea University 2012 ProQuest Number: 10805374 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 10805374 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 THESIS SUMMARY Welsh Writing in English: Case Studies in Cultural Interaction This thesis explores and analyses instances of cultural interaction in the English-language literature of Wales. It explores the encounters that Anglophone Welsh writers have had with non-European territories and cultures, such as the complex textual record of Alun Lewis’s experience of 1940s India, Welsh writers’ experiences of Australia since the 1960s and Robert Minhinnick’s writing about Brazil in the 1990s. It also explores the images and impressions of Llanybri inscribed in the poetry of the Argentine-born modernist poet Lynette Roberts. Using a broad range of theories from the fields of postcolonial studies, travel writing studies and interpretive anthropology, it explores issues such as the construction of cultural difference, the identity politics of cultural assimilation, and the reproduction and subversion of colonial tropes and stereotypes. By examining the diverse ways in which the Welsh have written about their experience of a range of cultures and environments throughout the twentieth century the thesis attempts to uncover hitherto undiscovered territory within the study of Welsh Writing in English. DECLARATION This work has not previously been accepted in any substance for any degree and is not being concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree. Signed: ...................^ ...^ ..................................................................(Candidate) Date: lO* O (? ' (~b STATEMENT 1 This is the result of my own investigations, except where otherwise stated. Where correction services have been used, the extent and nature of the correction is clearly marked in a footnote (s). Signed: ............................. (Candidate) Date: 1 O* ^ STATEMENT 2 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed: ......... (Candidate) Date: ...................... CONTENTS Page: Introduction 1 1. Alun Lewis and the politics of colonial India 11 2. ‘Always observant and slightly obscure’: Lynette Roberts and Ethnographic Practice 40 3. ‘Taffy was Transported’: Welsh responses to Australia since the 1960s 75 4. ‘We are not tourists’: Robert Minhinnick and the politics of contemporary travel 106 Conclusion 145 Bibliography 147 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Prof. M. Wynn Thomas for supervising the writing of this thesis with great enthusiasm, patience and good humour. I would also like to thank my parents, Ian and Gwyneira Evans, for their unwavering love and encouragement throughout, and Alys Kaye for believing that I could do it. Finally, I would like to thank the James Pantyfedwen Foundation for supporting me throughout the thesis. ABBREVIATIONS CPTHJ T. Harri Jones, The Collected Poems o f T. Harri Jones (Llandysul: Gomer Press, 1977) CS Alun Lewis, Collected Stones, ed. by Cary Archard (Bridgend: Seren Books, 1990 DLR Lynette Roberts, Dianes, Letters and Recollections (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2008) HF Robert Minhinnick, Hey Fatman (Bridgend: Seren, 1994). IG T Alun Lewis, In the Green Tree (Cardigan: Parthian books, 2006). LCP Alun Lewis, Collected Poems, ed. by Cary Archard (Bridgend: Seren, 1994) RCP Lynette Roberts, Collected Poems (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2005). TS Bryn Griffiths, The Survivors (London: Dent, 1971). INTRODUCTION I resolved to rinse my mind of preconceptions, to write no more poems about Europe and to speak as I found ... Bom and bred in South Wales, I thought I knew the face of poverty, but the poverty of India is like acid in the brain ... The villages surrounding our camp bear the permanent weals of destitution. The camp followers take the swill from our bins; every child is a beggar. The picaresque still survives. The birdcatcher wanders the streets of Poona, a cage of singing birds in each hand; the mongoose will fight the viper for a couple of chips, if sahib please. But the tumbling odour of the villages, the dark hovels of that have neither door nor chimney, the vultures and piedogs about the rotting carcase of a goat, the naked children and verminous old men, the shrivelled women whose faces bear the hard cast of experience and not its enriching gentleness - this is what broke Nehru’s heart.1 I had read about Calcutta, seen films, talked to people who had been there, imagined in advance ‘the most wicked place in the Universe’ as (the spectacularly well- travelled) Robert Clive once described it. But still, on that bus ride, still I gawped and sometimes flinched at the strangeness that assailed me on every side. The neon boast of a towering Hilton consigned to impeccable transience by the plague scene from the middle ages at its foot. Children scratting in rubbish for food and fuel. Water buffalo submerged in foetid green pools alongside huge modem tenement blocks with only candles to light them. A little girl about the age of my three-year-old Branwen weaving a path through roaring traffic with a naked baby in her arms. A man lifting his longhi to take a shit in the gutter. Women suckling babies outside rag bivouacs. Walls plastered with dung patties. The overpowering stench of exhaust fumes spiced with smells of burning as pavement dwellers everywhere cooked their evening meal.2 Although the publication of these two passages is separated by more than fifty years, they are, in many ways, remarkably uniform in their reaction to and representation of India. The first passage is found in Alun Lewis’s article ‘Stones for Bread’ which was commissioned by the New Statesman in 1940 to be a report on his first impressions of India when he arrived there with the South Wales Borderers; such was the British army’s reaction to the article that he was subsequently ordered to submit all his material in future to the censor first. The second passage is from Nigel Jenkins’ award-winning travelogue Gwalia in Khasia (1995) which details his journey to the Khasi Hills in North-East India to investigate the establishment of a Welsh colony (the ‘Patagonia of the East’ as he calls it) in the nineteenth century by the Welsh missionary, Thomas Jones, and his followers.3 In both passages, India is presented as a shocking affront to the European senses - Alun Lewis, who announces his 1 Alun Lewis, ‘Stones for Bread’, New Statesman, May 1st, 1943 in Alun Lewis, A Miscellany o f his Writings (ed.) John Pikoulis (Poetry Wales Press: Bridgend, 1982), p. 161 2 Nigel Jenkins, Gwalia in Khasia: A visit to the site, in India, o f the biggest overseas venture ever sustained by the Welsh (Llandysul: Gomer, 1995), p.40 3 Ibid, p. 15 2 South Walian credentials in the poverty stakes, finds that poverty in India far exceeds that back home. Indeed, he presents it as pervasive and endemic to the sub-continent (notice he uses the phrase ‘poverty o f India’ rather than ‘poverty in India’). In both passages, the vast country is generally perceived as being abject, in Kristeva’s sense of that word: it smells awful, naked children are begging and looking through the refuse, there are rotting carcases in the street and men openly defecating in public. Similarly, both locate their respective Indias