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R. S. Thomas is recognised globally as one of the major poets of the twentieth century. Such detailed attention as has been paid to the religious dimensions of his work has, however, largely limited itself to such matters as his obsession with the ‘absent God’, his appalled fascination with the mixed cruelty and wonder of a divinely created world, his interest in the world-view of the ‘new physics’, and his increasingly heterodox stance on spiritual matters. What has been largely neglected is his central indebtedness to key features of the ‘classic’ Christian tradition. This book concentrates on one powerful and compelling example of this, reading Thomas’s great body of religious work in the light of the three days that form the centre of the Gospel narrative; the days which tell of the death, entombment and resurrection of Christ.

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Literary Criticism

Irish

English

European

Welsh

Scottish

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Publié par	University of Wales Press
Date de parution	15 novembre 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783169221
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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S ATURDAY’S S ILENCE
WRITING WALES IN ENGLISH

CREW series of Critical and Scholarly Studies General Editors: Kirsti Bohata and Daniel G. Williams ( CREW , Swansea University)
This CREW series is dedicated to Emyr Humphreys, a major figure in the literary culture of modern Wales, a founding patron of the Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales . Grateful thanks are due to the late Richard Dynevor for making this series possible.

Other titles in the series
Stephen Knight, A Hundred Years of Fiction (978-0-7083-1846-1) Barbara Prys-Williams, Twentieth-Century Autobiography (978-0-7083-1891-1) Kirsti Bohata, Postcolonialism Revisited (978-0-7083-1892-8) Chris Wigginton, Modernism from the Margins (978-0-7083-1927-7) Linden Peach, Contemporary Irish and Welsh Women’s Fiction (978-0-7083-1998-7) Sarah Prescott, Eighteenth-Century Writing from Wales: Bards and Britons (978-0-7083-2053-2) Hywel Dix, After Raymond Williams: Cultural Materialism and the Break-Up of Britain (978-0-7083-2153-9) Matthew Jarvis, Welsh Environments in Contemporary Welsh Poetry (978-0-7083-2152-2) Harri Garrod Roberts, Embodying Identity: Representations of the Body in Welsh Literature (978-0-7083-2169-0) Diane Green, Emyr Humphreys: A Postcolonial Novelist (978-0-7083-2217-8) M. Wynn Thomas, In the Shadow of the Pulpit: Literature and Nonconformist Wales (978-0-7083-2225-3) Linden Peach, The Fiction of Emyr Humphreys: Contemporary Critical Perspectives (978-0-7083-2216-1) Daniel Westover, R. S. Thomas: A Stylistic Biography (978-0-7083-2413-4) Jasmine Donahaye, Whose People? Wales, Israel, Palestine (978-0-7083-2483-7) Judy Kendall, Edward Thomas: The Origins of His Poetry (978-0-7083-2403-5) Damian Walford Davies, Cartographies of Culture: New Geographies of Welsh Writing in English (978-0-7083-2476-9) Daniel G. Williams, Black Skin, Blue Books: African Americans and Wales 1845–1945 (978-0-7083-1987-1) Andrew Webb, Edward Thomas and World Literary Studies: Wales, Anglocentrism and English Literature (978-0-7083-2622-0) Alyce von Rothkirch, J. O. Francis, realist drama and ethics: Culture, place and nation (978-1-7831-6070-9) Rhian Barfoot, Liberating Dylan Thomas: Rescuing a Poet from Psycho-Sexual Servitude (978-1-7831-6184-3) Daniel G. Williams, Wales Unchained: Literature, Politics and Identity in the American Century (978-1-7831-6212-3) M. Wynn Thomas, The Nations of Wales 1890–1914 (978-1-78316-837-8)
S ATURDAY’S S ILENCE
R. S. T HOMAS AND P ASCHAL R EADING
WRITING WALES IN ENGLISH
R ICHARD M C L AUCHLAN
© Richard McLauchlan, 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library CIP Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78316-920-7 eISBN 978-1-78316-922-1
The right of Richard McLauchlan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Cover image: R. S. Thomas c.1985. Photograph by Gerallt Llewelyn, reproduced by permission.
To my parents
C ONTENTS
Series Editors’ Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Divine Silence and Theological Language
2 A Poetic Theology of Suffering
3 Silence, Epiphany and Hope
4 Prayer
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
S ERIES E DITORS’ P REFACE
The aim of this series, since its founding in 2004 by Professor M. Wynn Thomas, is to publish scholarly and critical work by established specialists and younger scholars that reflects the richness and variety of the English-language literature of modern Wales. The studies published so far have amply demonstrated that concepts, models and discourses current in the best contemporary studies can illuminate aspects of Welsh culture, and have also foregrounded the potential of the Welsh example to draw attention to themes that are often neglected or marginalised in anglophone cultural studies. The series defines and explores that which distinguishes Wales’s anglophone literature, challenges critics to develop methods and approaches adequate to the task of interpreting Welsh culture, and invites its readers to locate the process of writing Wales in English within comparative and transnational contexts.
Kirsti Bohata and Daniel G. Williams
Founding Editor: M. Wynn Thomas (2004–15)
CREW ( Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales ) Swansea University
A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book began life as a Cambridge University doctoral thesis, and I would like to thank the trustees of the Crosse Studentship within Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity, and those of the Bethune-Baker Studentship in Theology at Pembroke College, for the financial support that allowed me to carry out my research. I would particularly like to thank my supervisor, Revd Dr Gregory Seach, for the time he offered, and the care he showed, both to me and this project. His depth of perception and constant encouragement have been invaluable. I also owe a great debt to Dr Henry Marsh for showing me that the scholar’s approach is no barrier to the love of poetry. Thanks, too, to Prof. David Ford, who helped me start out in the field of theology and literature, and to Prof. Robin Kirkpatrick, who responded with great insight to the draft chapters of the thesis. I must thank Prof. Tony Brown of the R. S. Thomas Study Centre, Bangor University, for allowing me access to the Centre’s materials. His friendly welcome in Bangor and assistance during the editorial process have been greatly appreciated. And I am deeply grateful to Dr Rowan Williams and Prof. M. Wynn Thomas, who acted as examiners for the thesis, for their critical comments and enthusiasm to see this work in print.
I must also thank Jon Mackenzie, Ruth Jackson, Raphael Cadenhead, Nicki Wilkes, Matthias and Vicki Grebe, Sam and Christine Kimbriel, Giles Waller, Alex Englander, Mark Knight, Javier Garcia, Philip McCosker, Jay Parini, Mikey Wood, Will Ferguson, and Sabrina Pilarczyk for their friendship and support. I am hugely appreciative of the community at Blackfriars, Cambridge, for providing a much-needed spiritual home during the writing of the thesis. I would also like to express my gratitude to Rajashree Dahnaraj and her husband, Simon Hancock, for putting a roof over my head during the final stages of my work.
Permission to quote the poems of R. S. Thomas has kindly been granted by Gwydion Thomas. Poems, however, which have appeared in Thomas’s Selected Poems 1946–1968 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1986) and Collected Later Poems 1988–2000 (Tarset, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2004) are reprinted here by permission of Bloodaxe Books, though I cite them from their original publications in the present volume. I am very grateful to Dr Suzanne Fairless-Aitken at Bloodaxe for her assistance in arranging this. The close readings of ‘The Prayer’ in chapter 1 , and of ‘Sea-watching’ and ‘Waiting’ in chapter 4 , have appeared, with a few variations, in an earlier essay of mine under the title, ‘Saturday Prayers: R. S. Thomas and the Search for a Silent God’, in Poetry and Prayer: The Power of the Word II , eds Francesca Bugliani Knox and John Took (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 169–85 (Copyright © 2015), and are here reprinted by generous permission of the publishers.
Finally, my thanks must go to my family and particularly my parents, Grahame and Rosaly McLauchlan, who have given me all the educational opportunities I could have hoped for, and, more importantly, show me what it is to love God and neighbour. This book is dedicated to them.
A BBREVIATIONS
(For full bibliographical details see Bibliography)
Works by R. S. Thomas
A
Autobiographies
BHN
Between Here and Now
C
Counterpoint
D
Destinations
EA
Experimenting with an Amen
ERS
The Echoes Return Slow
F
Frequencies
H’m
H’m
LP
Later Poems
LS
Laboratories of the Spirit
LTRG
Letters to Raymond Garlick, 1951–1999
MHT
Mass for Hard Times
NTHBF
Not That He Brought Flowers
NTWF
No Truce with the Furies
P
Pietà
PBRV
The Penguin Book of Religious Verse
R
Residues
SP
Selected Prose
SYT
Song at the Year’s Turning
TWI
The Way of It
UP
Uncollected Poems
WA
Welsh Airs
Works by Other Authors
CT
Compendium of Theology , St Thomas Aquinas
SCG
Summa contra Gentiles , St Thomas Aquinas
ST
Summa Theologiæ , St Thomas Aquinas
PG
Patrologia Graeca , ed. J. P. Migne
All Scriptural quotations are taken from the Authorised ( King James ) Version .
All Greek citations from the New Testament are taken from the Nestle-Aland 28 Edition of the Novum Testamentum Graece , which can be accessed online at nestle-aland.com .
I NTRODUCTION
The Christian doctrine of sanctification is constituted, in part, by the claim that the life of the believer will be transformed according to the paschal pattern of death and resurrection. At the heart of this movement is the purifying silence of Holy Saturday, to which the Gospel writers bear witness by their own silence concerning the events – or, rather, non-events – of this day. 1 On Holy Saturday all speech about God and his engagement with humanity is brought to nothing; or, to use more boldly participatory language, it lies dead in the grave with the Son of God. All that humanity may have meant by divine power, sovereignty and love is silenced in the silence of this death. It is this silencing, however, that forms the precondition for authentic re-creat