Dylan Thomas (1915-1953)
A selective list of literary criticism for the British poet Dylan Thomas, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Web Sites
main page | 20th-century literature | 20th-century poetry | British poets | about literaryhistory.com
introduction
"Dylan Thomas." Poetry Archive. Directors, Andrew Motion & Richard Carrington.
"Dylan Thomas." Good, encyclopedia-type introduction to Dylan Thomas's themes, style and techniques, with a biography and text for many of his best known poems. Poetry Foundation.
"Dylan Thomas." A brief introduction from the Academy of American Poets.
"Dylan Thomas." An introduction to Dylan Thomas from the BBC, includes information about his writing and places he lived in Wales.
The Dylan Thomas Festival of 2003. The web site contains several short articles about the poet.
"Dylan Thomas." Audio files of Dylan Thomas reading his poetry, from Harper Audio.
literary criticism
Balakier, James J. "Ambiguous Reversal of Dylan Thomas's 'In Country Sleep.'" The author notes that "Among the relatively few father-daughter poems in the canon, Dylan Thomas's 'In Country Sleep' is striking for its frank portrayal of a caring though conflicted state of fatherhood." Papers on Language and Literature Winter 1996.
Craik, Roger. "Green and dying in chains: Dylan Thomas's 'Fern Hill' and Kenneth Grahame's 'The Golden Age.'" On a writer who influenced Dylan Thomas, whose stories, "written about children but for adults, revert to the Wordsworthian and Blakean ideas of children as 'illuminati' whose perception is far superior to that of the unimaginative, pleasure-stifling adults ('Olympians') who control them." Twentieth Century Literature 1998.
Cyr, Marc D. "Dylan Thomas's 'Do not go gentle into that good night.'" Says the author, "Dylan Thomas's 'Do not go gentle into that good night' has been noted to bear the influence of and even echo W. B. Yeats, especially "Lapis Luzuli," and, secondarily via this poem, Shakespeare's King Lear." Papers on Language and Literature Spring 1998.
Ferris, Paul, ed. Google page for The Collected Letters of Dylan Thomas (Dent 1985). In his introduction, Ferris notes that among the several contradictions of Thomas, "the exuberant rhetoric of his work belies an equally strong devotion to artistry, what he once called 'my craft or sullen art.'"
Phillips, Ivan. A substantial introductory article on Dylan Thomas from the Literary Encyclopedia 2 April 2001 [subscription service].
Welsh Writing in English. Web site for the scholarly journal, edited by Dr Tony Brown, U of Wales.
main page | 20th-century literature | 20th-century poetry | British poets | about literaryhistory.com
1998-2011 by Jan Pridmore