الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
TIle beginning of the modern poetic legend of Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) wa the love of language: h wrot poetry becau 11 fell in Iove with word and sounds as he hill If declared 011 many occasion :
The mo t iuqlQ.rtaut fe~tlJre cf Thomas’r PQetJ:Y 1Il its l’UlJ?b~is 011 the poken word. ’The poem ’Ill lite page is only ualf u poem’, In this he doe re emble all early poets whose work \V3:$ delivered orally to a frequently illiterate, bill sharp-eared audieu e. TboO’l.1s cared for ound above meania : ’I did net eare wltal the words said ovennnch.. __ J cared fOJ 11l1’ shapes of sound t1~1 their uarnes. and the words describing their act ions made in my ears’. (Bridgman)
Indeed. Thomas had faith in tile power of words: .uch power wa derived from both their sounds and the unlimited meanings they could onvey. He manipular d word and even coined new one. for the sake of hi poetic practic . He published his first volume 18 Poems (1934 at tb age of twenty. In addition. Thomas wrote rna t of his poetry in his early Wens. even when he grew up the adolescence notebook, r mained a .ouree of inspiration for mo t of hi - later poems.
Th critical responses to his poetry ranged widely from great admiration to hostile-com. There hav alway been claims that 11101M’ s poetry is borh difficult and obscure. However there has al (J been an agreement that hi peen”)’ i admired tor its’ lyrical merits even ~ irhour being understood at all, Although the language of Thomas’spoerry ha a magical impact 011 its reader, they have ’( ually felt a ense of ob curity and doubt about the real meaning ofhi poems,
Thoma ” ob curiry Ita alway been an object of di us ion for almost every critic tackling hi poetry. Ralph Iaud think that the reader can handle the ob rcuriry problem since Thoma’ always provid him or her with clues (0 under laud the meaning of the poen» . Malld. {linher .. argue that ob curity is a n cessny imposed by the demand of th subject-maner. Both Eld r 01 on and
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\\ illiam T. Moynihan <::e that obscurity i used by homas to attract reader: ’ attention and to control their emotional response to hi own poetry. J, Hillis Miller attempt to explain the obscurity problem in th light of Thomas S OWI1 view of the univer e and the ideas tackled by the poems (Dodsworth: 107-11). Henry Treece thinks thnr uch ob curity te:nlS from the language of the poem. Thomas ’Uses ”a limited vocabulary” in expressing man}’ idea: as a result. a , ingle \ ord conveys multiple meanings (106)
TIle problem of tile interpretation of Thoma ’ poetry is do ely related to the obscurity problem. Mo ’I of the interpretations re ort to either religion or Thomas’s own life in order to find 1I11 entry to his own work. Tracing the biographical origin of Thomas s poems has re ulted in another charge against hi. poetry. 111 r hay been claims thai Thomas’s poetry is If-centred, in the sense thar it them is alway Thomas himself:’ Because the knowledge of the human inner feelings is inseparable from the external factors which arouse them, both the inner and outer \ orld ate very close in Thoma’s poetry. Tbi llnil~ i
larly manifested in hi earlier poems where he expr se hi own emotions in terms of natural external proces es l tephens: 22-S).
In spite of ’\IChlltiack and charges against hi poetry Thomas ucceeded in establishing hi. tatus a a lyric poet of ex eprional power. And, later on, there 118 been a shift in po irion in the critical reception of hi work. In 19:-~ Thomas checked through hi earlier volume starting from 18 poems 09”4) to In ’ountty Sleep 1952) and chose the poems of hi Collected Poems. He wrot a ”Prologue” especially for this collection of the poems he wished 10 pre erve. S,ICh chronological display of his own po ri work allows the reader 10
ee Thomas’ development as a poet , ccording to William York Tindall, Thomas s work fall into rhre .• ~ period The ”womb and toreb’ period of tbe earlier poems which reflects the obscuriti ’of gene is. fall, birth sex and death; the ecoud period which reflects the impecrof war upon his work: and the third period which reflect maturity and ubmis ion. Tindall regj rds the In t period a
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