'Wee wenhonourGhosetrayn': The spectres of Modern Welsh Writing in English

威尔士的英语作家们与鬼魂生活在一起。在斯蒂芬·奈特的《星期六之夜的心》中，集市上的“幽灵列车”穿越了社区的共同点（“cawmun”）：它的口语语音拼写徘徊在英语和威尔士语之间，年轻叙述者的活动在孩子气的天真和严峻的成人经验之间摇摆不定。以英语为母语的威尔士语写作也同样徘徊在一个无形的文化空间中，被称为“后工业”、"后社区“、”后田园“和”后民族“。因此，现代威尔士英语写作呈现出一种文学的面貌，这种文学被过去社会经济和文化状况的幽灵所困扰，同时也期待着未来的身份和形成。我的研究项目探讨了从1990年至今用英语写的威尔士文学的光谱质量调查缺乏，损失和不稳定性等写作提出的问题，以及英语威尔士文学如何挑战，扩展和反驳现有的光谱理论的概念。同时，光谱理论促进了这种文学的理论化，在其能力，询问当代威尔士的社会经济和社会政治地位。我的项目有一个四章的结构，按上述大类组织作品。至关重要的是，我将研究的作者的作品位于动荡时期，标志着威尔士重工业的关闭，权力下放的引入和后果，以及作为大规模威尔士政府项目的一部分将威尔士语重新引入威尔士：一个关于损失和衰落的时期，因为它是关于出生和形成的。每一章都有一个作者谁是本章的主要焦点，但将确定其他英语威尔士作家的工作证明了新的趋势出现在该领域。就像它所回应的工业社会一样，工业小说一直是世纪威尔士写作的主导模式之一。克里斯托弗·梅雷迪思的当代作品中所遭遇的创伤、残疾和灭绝的比喻描述了一个后工业时代，一个已经逝去的工业世界和由它支撑的社会的幽灵萦绕在那里。接下来，我的第二章研究了我所称的“后公社”文学，它包括乔·邓索恩动荡的“成年”小说。我研究的方式，威尔士的身份正变得越来越分散和个人主义，而不是保持英语威尔士文学过去的社区为导向的感觉。该项目的第三章理论化的创伤和暴力的“后田园”作品的尼尔格里菲斯，调查不只是在一个日益城市化的概念，民族身份的威尔士农村地区的地位，但威尔士农村经济的衰落威胁到一个特定的威尔士生活方式依赖于该经济的方式。我的第四章涉及“后国民”;我打算与彼得·吉尔的戏剧，以探讨威尔士作家的作品在威尔士以外的地方被威尔士文化的幽灵所困扰的方式。我问，如果这样的写作可以被视为“非威尔士写作英语”：一个流行的刻板威尔士身份的幽灵，植根于工业，社区，田园和国家，困扰这些作品？最后，本文认为当代威尔士英语写作是困扰的损失：工业，社区，田园景观，和国家作为不同的英语生活方式。

Welsh anglophone writers are living with ghosts. The 'ghosetrayn' at the fair in Stephen Knight's 'The Heart of Saturday Night' traverses the shared common ('cawmun') of the community: its colloquial phonetic spelling lingers between the English and Welsh language, the activity of the young narrator vacillates between childish innocence and grim adult experience. Characterised variously as 'Post-Industrial', 'Post-Communal', 'Post-Pastoral' and 'Post-National', anglophone Welsh writing likewise hovers in an intangible cultural space. Modern Welsh writing in English thus takes on the guise of a literature haunted by the spectres of its past socioeconomic and cultural condition while also anticipating future identities and formations. My research project examines the spectral qualities of Welsh literature written in English from 1990-present investigating the questions of lack, loss and instability such writing raises, and how anglophone Welsh literature challenges, extends and refutes existing conceptions of spectral theory. Simultaneously, spectral theory facilitates the theorisation of such literature in terms of its capacity to interrogate the socioeconomic and socio-political status of contemporary Wales. My project has a four-chapter structure, organising works by the broad categories described above. Crucially, the works of the authors I will study are located in the tumultuous period which marked the closure of Welsh heavy industry, the introduction and aftermath of devolution and the reintroduction of the Welsh language to Wales as part of a largescale Welsh Government project: a period which is as much about loss and decline as it is about birth and formation. Each chapter has one author who is the chapter's main focus, but will identify other anglophone Welsh writers whose work testifies to new trends emerging in the field. Like the industrial society to which it responded, industrial fiction has been one of the dominant modes of Welsh writing in the twentieth century. The tropes of trauma, disability and deracination encountered in the contemporary works of Christopher Meredith describe a post-industrial moment haunted by the spectres of a departed industrial world and the society sustained by it. Following on, my second chapter investigates what I term 'Post-Communal' literature which encompasses both the turbulent 'coming-of-age' novels of Joe Dunthorne. I examine the ways in which the Welsh identity is becoming increasingly fragmented and individualist, rather than maintaining the community-oriented feeling of anglophone Welsh literatures past. The third chapter of the project theorises traumatic and violent 'Post-Pastoral' works of Niall Griffiths, investigating not just the position of rural areas of Wales within an increasingly urbanised conception of national identity, but the ways in which the decline of the Welsh rural economy threatens a particular Welsh way of life dependent on that economy. My fourth chapter deals with the 'Post-National'; I intend to engage with plays by Peter Gill in order to explore the ways in which works by Welsh writers set outside of Wales are haunted by the spectres of Welsh culture. I ask if such writing can be conceived of as 'non-Welsh writing in English': does the spectre of a popular stereotypical Welsh identity, rooted in the industrial, the communal, the pastoral and the national, haunt these works? Ultimately, this thesis argues contemporary Welsh writing in English is haunted by loss: of industry, the community, the pastoral landscape, and the nation as distinct from English ways of life.