In the Shadow of the Pulpit : Literature and Nonconformist Wales

Ranging from the nineteenth century to the present, this book explores several central aspects of the ways in which the English-language poetry and fiction of Wales has responded to what was, for a crucial period of a century or so, the dominant culture of Wales: the culture of Welsh nonconformity.

This is a crucially important analysis that should blaze a trail for succeeding generations to discover paths not only through the wilderness of their world but also their own selves. As I did as I read. Matters became clear which had been little more than a mist of intuition.

It requires an exceptional effort of patient scholarship and historical empathy to convey how profoundly the thoughts, words, habits and deeds of those who lived only a generation or so ago were shaped by religious influences-often never more so than when they sought to rebel against them. In this new history of the Welsh dissenting culture and its impact on major Anglo-Welsh writers, M. Wynn Thomas eloquently and convincingly demonstrates how crucial its influence was. Lawrence Buell, Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature, Harvard University

Following a personal introduction reflecting on the significance of chapel culture to Welsh life, this study proceeds to offer a simple explanation for the general, secular reader of the origins and meaning of Welsh Nonconformity. In the main body of the work, attention is first drawn to the gradual emergence in Wales from the later eighteenth century onwards of creative writing in English about this dominant Nonconformist culture, culminating in the appearance of the hitherto unexplored body of substantial Anglophone work at the end of the nineteenth century. Then turning to the twentieth century, the study first demonstrates the various textual strategies a powerful new genration of `Anglo-Welsh'' writers employed to attack and undermine this hegemonic religious culture and then examines the work of four authors - Glyn Jones, Dylan Thomas, Emyr Humphreys and Roland Mathias - in detail to demonstrate the depth and variety of the literary response over this last century to the world of the Welsh chapels.

Particularly valuable features of this study are its demonstration of the formative influence of Welsh Nonconformity on Welsh Writing in English; its examination of a whole body of writing about chapel life that has hitherto been unexplored; its argument that central to `Anglo-Welsh'' literature for much of the past century has been the struggle between preacher and writer for the soul of Welsh culture; and its suggestion that the work of Dylan Thomas might profitably be re-read in the light of his remarkable Welsh Unitarian ancestry.