Knowing his place : How Welsh are the "Border" trilogy of novels by Raymond Williams?

Published in the years from 1960 to 1979, the novels of Raymond Williams’ ‘Border’ or ‘Welsh’ trilogy explore and reveal his changing feelings for, and responses to, his Welsh border background, both the physical landscape and the community. This dissertation examines how, for Williams, the novels were a crucial part of his life-long discussion of community and culture from a socialist perspective. His books of literary and cultural history like Culture and Society (1958), The Long Revolution (1961) and The Country and the City (1973) are justly well-known, and Williams sometimes uses his own personal Welsh border background in these texts. This thesis proposes that the trilogy novels, particularly Border Country, present experiences and attitudes closely related to Williams’ own life and reflect issues he examined in his non-fiction writing, especially his increasing focus on Welsh culture from the late 1960s. The study focuses closely on textual detail and discusses: (a) the problematic ‘Welshness’ of the border region where Williams grew up; (b) responses to the border landscape; (c) the nature and emotional significance of community, in the Welsh border farming region and in the English city where two related border-origin families live; and (d)the sense of Welsh identity. Through this discussion two other themes emerge: the struggle of academics of working-class origins to find or know their place in relation to their background, and the power and influence of England in Welsh culture.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

ma

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

masters

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Wales Trinity Saint David

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Madden, Norman

• DA Prydain Fawr
• PR Llenyddiaeth Saesneg

Dc Identifier Grantnumber

UWTSD

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.uwtsd.ac.uk:468