Saturday's Silence: R. S. Thomas and Paschal Reading

by Richard McLauchlan

Overview

R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) was one of the major poets of the twentieth century, an Anglican priest who fiercely disliked the spread of Anglicanism in Wales and was called “the Solzhenitsyn of Wales” for his ability to force attention to matters of conscience. This book reveals his poetry’s deep indebtedness to key features of the classic Christian tradition through a focus on the three days at the center of the story of the resurrection and how they are reflected in and treated through Thomas’s work.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783169207
Publisher:	University of Wales Press
Publication date:	02/15/2017
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Richard McLauchlan is a freelance researcher and writer. He also runs Light Up Learning, an educational charity based in Edinburgh.
 

Table of Contents

Series Editors' Preface ix

Acknowledgements xi

Abbreviations xiii

Introduction 1

1 Divine Silence and Theological Language 17

2 A Poetic Theology of Suffering 41

3 Silence, Epiphany and Hope 65

4 Prayer 93

Conclusion 125

Notes 131

Bibliography 163

Index 173

Editorial Reviews

This is a brave and bold book that engages deeply with the poems of R. S. Thomas to suggest that the Triduum itself—the movement from Good Friday through Easter Sunday— is the essential progress of the soul in its engagement with God, with Holy Saturday as a liminal space of great anxiety and potential. In his approach to suffering, hope, and prayer mediated through the language of Thomas, the author invites us on an intellectual and spiritual journey that is surprising in its multiple insights and affirming in the ways it leads forward into faith.”

Jay Parini

R. S. Thomas’s terse and condensed poetic voice is inflected more than some readers realise by a deep hinterland of theological and philosophical reflection.  This creative new reading of his poetry locates him very specifically in what is not only a theological but a liturgical place, the intense but fertile darkness of the day between Good Friday and Easter —‘a descent into hell’ that is also a retrieval and transformation of the experiences of loss, protest and failure.  This is a subtle, careful and persuasive interpretation of one of our major modern poets.’

 

Dr Rowan Williams

A landmark study of R. S. Thomas, an important and rare voice in poetry and in faith in an age of doubt.”

Janet Soskice

Richard McLauchlan’s excellent volume illustrates how productive the relationship can be between theology and literary analysis. The author maintains throughout a close and sensitive attention to the linguistic and formal detail of R. S. Thomas’s poetry, revealing the intensity of the poet’s imagination and equally of his theological understanding.

Robin Kirkpatrick