This course explores Welsh women’s writing in a range of contexts. We will question and explore the legitimacy of reading and organizing literary texts along lines of gender, will ask whether there is a distinctive form of Welsh women’s writing, and interrogate the ways in which forms of feminism have interacted with other cultural forces and political ideologies (eg. class, nationalism, language) in Wales. Two classes will be devoted to each of the following topics.

1. Women writers and the Welsh tradition. We begin by looking at the ways in which the history of Welsh writing in English has been narrated and will trace the emergence and impact of feminist criticism on the Welsh literary scene. This section will look at both critical histories (Glyn Jones, Tony Conran, Roland Mathias), challenges to those histories (Jane Aaron, Katie Gramich, Dirdre Beddoe) and early texts currently brought back into circulation by Honno Press (Allen Raine, Amy Dillwyn) that offer a range of possible beginnings for a tradition of Welsh women’s writing.

2. Women Modernists In this section we will concentrate primarily on three writers: Margiad Evans, Lynette Roberts, Dorothy Edwards . We will locate their works within Welsh and European contexts and explore both their thematic concerns and formal experiments.

3. Re-writing Industrial Wales Industrial Wales has both been depicted and analysed in masculinist terms. Here we explore the ways in which the industrial novel has been written from a female perspective. We will concentrate on the writings of Kate Roberts (in translation), Menna Gallie and Rachel Trezise.

4. Feminism, Ethnicity and the Nation The longest section of the course will explore the sheer diversity of ways in which women have described, responded to and engaged in dialogue with Wales and Welshness in the post-War period. We will look particularly at the inter-relationship between gender and nationhood in the writings of Gillian Clarke and Sian James, the politics of language in the writings of Gwyneth Lewis, the interrelationship between female and minority ethnic identities in the writings of Leonora Brito and Charlotte Williams, and the remarkable fusion of all these issues in the theatrical performances of Eddie Ladd.

Intended Learning Outcomes:

• a grasp of the diversity of Welsh Women’s writing in English
• an ability to read the contextual dimensions of literary texts
• an ability to apply, and to discuss the merits, of several different approaches to literature
• a broad awareness of literary and cultural developments in modern Wales
• a sensitivity to significant differences in cultural identities

Transferable skills:

Students should become more proficient in:

• Critical discernment and analytical grasp of theoretical models and their application to texts and discourses
• verbal and written communication at advanced (postgraduate) level
• structured thought and analytical argument
• experience with team work, communication skills and presentation techniques

Main recommended texts

Final choice of texts for study will be determined, in part, by availability, since much of the work is out of print. The following list of texts is therefore indicative only:
Jane Aaron, A View Across the Valley: Stories by Women from Wales 1850 – 1950
Leonora Brito, Dat’s Love
Gillian Clarke, Selected Poems
Amy Dillwyn, The Rebecca Rioter
Dorothy Edwards, Rhapsody
Dorothy Edwards, Winter Sonata
Margiad Evans, Country Dance
Margiad Evans, A Ray of Darkness
Menna Gallie, The Small Mine
Menna Gallie, Strike for a Kingdom
Katie Gramich ed., Welsh Women’s Poetry 1460 – 2001
Sian James, A Small Country
Gwyneth Lewis, Keeping Mum
Gwyneth Lewis, Parables and Faxes
Allen Raine, Queen of the Rushes
Kate Roberts, Feet in Chains
Lynette Roberts, Poems Rachel Trezise, In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl
Charlotte Williams, Sugar and Slate

Secondary Reading A twelve-page bibliography, divided into sections, is issued for the MA in Welsh Writing in English. The attention of the student following this module will be drawn to the most immediately relevant texts.

Dylan Thomas and the Idea of Welsh Writing in English

Locating Wales: Comparative Perspectives

Women Writing Modern Wales

‘American Wales’: Writing the Transatlantic

Welsh Identities: literature and nationhood

Click here to read the CREW Bibliography