A Thematic Study Of Dylan Thomas’ Poetry

Dylan Thomas is one of the most outstanding Welsh poets in the twentieth century, who occupies an extremely crucial position in the history of English poetry. In the 1930 s, British poets prefer to write poems to reveal the rational reality. Different from those British poets, Thomas’ poetry focuses on groping for people’s inner feelings. As for the study of the nature theme, Thomas pays more attention to the ecological balance between men and nature, which has strong modernity, while other scholars still keep on studying the theme of nature from the perspective of English traditional romanticism. Dylan Thomas is an enormously creative poet, who voices his reflections about life, death, love and desire with unique and marvelous poetry rhythm. There is also another reason for his fame and prestige, that is, in the process of creating poems, he usually employs complex languages to formulate implicit meanings, which has great influences on English literature. Thomas’ poetry contains a wide range of themes, such as time, nature, life, death, religion, sexual love, and so on. However, themes of sexual love, death and nature run through most of Thomas’ poetry, and these three themes play a leading role of all the other themes in his poetry. This thesis aims to study the three main themes in Thomas’ poetry, which are themes of sexual love, death and nature. Meanwhile, by using the close reading method, this thesis conducts a comprehensive research on the above three main themes from the shallower to the deeper.This thesis expounds the theme of sexual love in Thomas’ poems from two aspects: first, the article makes a detailed analysis about sexual love to demonstrate it is a mode of burning men and women’s physical energy, and is also a necessary journey of life from prosperity to decline; then this paper elaborates sexual love in detail, which is a soul purifying agent from men and women’s inner world, and indicates the soul interdependence between men and women. Sexual love is also an original source of power to explore human himself and his mate, and can disperse human’s fears and confusions on the unknown mysterious world.Death is always a fascinating theme beloved by most poets, and Dylan Thomas has no exception. Death theme has almost run through all the Thomas’ poems, and is a complete consideration of death and life. This thesis discusses the theme of Death in Thomas’ poetry from two areas: first of all, the paper briefly describes Thomas’ acceptance of death. He considers that death is existent objectively in the world. Even though sometimes he despises death, he still accepts the objectivity and irresistible of death; next in the another aspect, Thomas agrees that death and life are in an eternal cycle, where Thomas’ denial of death can be seen distinctly, and is demonstrated thoroughly. Thomas deems that death lies in the cycle of life and death of the natural world, and death brings new birth. Life and death are eternal.Nature is an indispensable part in Thomas’ whole life, and is also a vital theme in his poetry. Nature theme can reflect Thomas’ affection for nature, and his aspiration of comiing back to nature. At first, through describing the scenery of natural world, Thomas’ intensive love for nature can be seen clearly; Secondly, this paper does a comprehensive exploration of the unity of nature and human so as to demonstrate Thomas’ forceful dream of returning to nature.This research discovers that, although two aspects of each theme seem to be isolated with each other, the second part is the promotion of the first aspect in the narration of each chapter. Meanwhile the three themes of sexual love, death and nature have an intimate relationship with each other. Sexual love is a exploration for man’s instinct, and also reflects his life experiences. Sexual love theme is the basis of these three themes. Sexual love means the joy, the passion and the newborn. New life signifies that it has to face death inevitably when it grows old. Thus new life has no choice but to confront death at last. Then it is death theme. This theme is a consideration about life, and plays the transitional role among the three themes. The dipiction of the theme of death and life emphasizes that death is a regression of nature, and Human’s cycle of life and death keeps space with nature’s evolution. Then Human’s death educes the nature theme. After death, Human’s body will corrupt and integrate into soil finally, which implies Human have returned to nature. The cycle between human and nature highlights the unity of human and nuture. Therefore nature theme plays a leading role among the three themes.