Dylan Thomas' Animalized Self: A Zoopoetical Reading of Dylan Thomas' Poetry

Abstract

Zoopoetics emerges as a reaction to the conventional poetic tradition that represents animals as silenced objects and symbolic elements of literature. Aligning animals with agency, subjectivity, and self-consciousness, zoopoetics treats animals as the essential and dynamic actors of the literary activity and refuses to perceive them as simple background materials. Hence, rising awareness towards animals and reconfiguring a more intimate and interdependent relationship between humans and nonhuman animals are the substantial issues, put forward by zoopoetics. Animals, undeniably, occupy a predominant place in the poetry of Dylan Thomas who incessantly emphasizes material and spiritual affinity between human and nonhuman animals. In this respect, zoopoetical scrutiny of Dylan Thomas’ poetry will be the prevailing concern of this study to unravel the poet's unconventional identification with animals as his spiritual partners and companions. Reading Dylan Thomas’ poetry from the perspective of zoopoetical criticism will provide a wider insight to Thomas' notion of animality, immersed in the human self as well as the agentic capacity of animals in the making of his poetry.