Roald Dahl : Wales of the unexpected

Author(s)

• Davies, Damian Walford

Bibliographic Information

Roald Dahl : Wales of the unexpected

edited by Damian Walford Davies

University of Wales Press, 2016

• : [pbk.]

Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Published to mark the centenary of Roald Dahl's (Welsh) birth, Roald Dahl: Wales of the Unexpected breaks new ground by revealing the place of Wales in the imagination of the writer known as 'the world's number one storyteller'. Exploring the complex conditioning presence of Wales in his life and work, the essays in this collection dramatically defamiliarise Dahl and in the process render him uncanny. Importantly, Dahl is encountered whole - his books for children and his fiction for adults are read as mutually invigorating bodies of work, both of which evidence the ways in which Wales, and the author's Anglo-Welsh orientation, demand articulation throughout the career. Recognising the impossibility of constructing a monolithic 'Welsh' Dahl, the contributors explore the compound and nuanced ways in which Wales signifies across the oeuvre. Roald Dahl: Wales of the Unexpected takes Dahl studies into new territory in terms of both subject and method, showing the new horizons that open up when Dahl is read through a Welsh lens. Locating Dahl in illuminating new textual networks, resourcefully offering fresh angles of entry into classic Dahl texts, rehabilitating neglected Dahl texts, and analysing the layered genesis of (seemingly) familiar works by excavating the manuscripts, this innovative volume brings Dahl 'home' in order to render him invigoratingly unhomely. The result is not a parochialisation of Dahl, but rather a new internationalisation.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction 'Inscription and Erasure: Mining for Welsh Dahl in the Archive' - Carrie Smith 'How Sweet Was My Valley: Willy Wonka and the Welsh Industrial Novel' - Tomos Owen 'Wales of the Unexpected: Kiss, Kiss' - Kevin Mills 'Homes, Horizons and Orbits: Welsh Dahl and the Aerial View' - Richard Marggraf Turley 'Dahl and Dylan: Matilda, 'In Country Sleep' and Twentieth-century Topographies of Fear' - Damian Walford Davies ''There's Something Fishy about Wales': Dahl, Identity, Language' - Ann Alston and Heather Worthington 'Dahl-in-Welsh, Welsh Dahl: Translation, Resemblance, Difference' - Siwan Rosser 'Dahl's Cardiff Spaces' - Peter Finch

by "Nielsen BookData"

• NCID: BB22860841
• ISBN:
  • 9781783169405
• Country Code: uk
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: Cardiff
• Pages/Volumes: xi, 191 p.
• Size: 22 cm
• Classification:
  • DC23 : 823.914
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : Dahl, Roald -- Criticism and interpretation
  • LCSH : Wales -- In literature