Dylan Thomas - And Death Shall Have No Dominion

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Dylan Thomas - And Death Shall Have No Dominion

The Author and His Times
When, in 1939, W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood set sail for the United States, the so-called 'All the fun' age ended. Auden's generation of poets' expectations came to nothing after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and they, disillusioned, left the European continent for good.
In the late 1930s the school of Surrealism reached England, and Dylan Thomas was one of the few British authors of the time who were followers of this new trend in the arts. He shared the Surrealist interest in the great abstracts of Love and Death, and composed most of his work according to the rules of Surrealism.
His first two volumes, Eighteen Poems and Twenty-five Poems were published in the middle of the decade and of this short surrealistic era as well. Dylan Thomas was declared the Shelley of the 20th century as his poems were the perfect examples of 'new-romanticism' with their 'violent natural imagery, sexual and Christian symbolism and emotional subject matter expressed in a singing rhythmical verse' (Under Siege - Robert Hewison, 1977.). The aim of 'new-romanticism' was setting poets free from W.H. Auden's demand for 'the strict and adult pen'.
In 1933 Dylan Thomas sent two of his poems to London, one of which was an earlier version of his famous poem, And Death Shall Have No Dominion. It was dated April 1933 in Thomas's notebook and was published for the first time in the 18 May 1933 issue of the New English Weekly. After its first publication, the poem was altered several times and got its final form in Twenty-five Poems, even though Thomas was not particularly proud of this work of his, and was not sure about publishing it for a second time.
The Poem
Immediately in its title, the poem has a reference to the New Testament, which was one of Dylan Thomas's main sources of metaphor. The title (and the refrain of the poem as well), 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion' has been taken from the King James Version of the Scriptures, which, with its flowing language and prose rhythm, has had profound influence on the literature of the past 300 years.
'Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves dead to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.'
Romans 6:9-11
There is another line in the poem,
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The complete article is about 1061 words and 4.24 pages long.

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