Hiraeth and ambiguous pastorals : Wales, England, and rural modernities between the Wars

The essay explores how Welsh writers in English often claimed a distinctive Welsh rural modernity giving a sense of community more authentic than that produced and consumed by the metropolitan society of modern England: texts examined will be the periodical Wales and the novel Rhondda Roundabout (1934) by Jack Jones. The essay then explores the the ways in which, despite hiraeth's specifically Welsh roots, many English readers and audiences during the interwar period seem also to have been fascinated by popular texts which presented them with stories of Wales as a nation or region which had strong associations with both the rural past and the industrial modern: the texts here will be Emlyn Williams' play The Corn is Green (1938) and Richard Llewellyn's novel How Green was My Valley (1939)