From Crises Towards Salvation

This thesis is an ecocritical investigation of the poetry of R. S. Thomas, one of the greatest English poets in the twentieth century.Chapter One examines the context of Thomas' s poetic creation concerning the “Machine”(i.e., industrial and technological civilization) and nature. The technological warfare in World War II and the Welsh descent are the origin of his representation of the Machine as a “crisis-monger”. His experience of nature in childhood and the priesthood have a formative influence on the notion of “country cures” in his poetry.Chapter Two is an ecocritical scrutiny of the adverse effects of the Machine in Thomas' s poetry. Ecotheory holds that technology is one of the main sources of ecological crisis; Harold Fromm maintains that technology has tamed nature and thus made God supererogatory, leading to the crisis of faith in Christendom; ecopsychology posits the reciprocity between nature and the human psyche and asserts that human disconnection from nature constitutes an important cause of modern man's psychological crisis. In Thomas' s poetry, the Machine generates ecological crisis, the crisis of faith and man's sense of alienation.Chapter Three investigates the solution provided by Thomas' s poetry to the foregoing crises. Thomas believes that the gateway to salvation is to receive “country cures”, by which is meant the experience of a sane self and of divinity in the tranquility of nature. The ideological root of ecocrisis is human/nature dualism and thus the battle to solve ecological crisis and to solve ideological crisis are one and the same. The ultimate goal of “country cures” is to make a revolution in man's worldview, that is, to make him realize his biological, psychological and spiritual rootedness in the earth, and then to make come true the ecotopia “Abercuawg” envisioned by Thomas.The thesis concludes that Thomas' s efforts to save religion and the human psyche and to save ecology are one and the same. Ecocriticism postulates the interplay between culture and nature. As a cultural artefact or discursive practice, Thomas' s greenwisdom-saturated poetry has participated in the construction of ecological discourse and promoted the reciprocity between culture and nature: its insightful revelation of the Machine as a crisis-monger constitutes a reaction against the discourse of technocentrism; its notion of “country cures” and nature mysticism, coinciding in some aspects with the ecological worldview of ecopsychology and ecotheology, provides an epistemological clue to the construction of a green world.