‘For those who do not know’: The Translation, Transmission and Reception of Saunders Lewis in English

The work of the dramatist, politician and critic Saunders Lewis has elicited more interpretation in English than that of any other Welsh-language writer. This essay traces Lewis’s dissemination for an English-language readership from the 1940s until the present under three broadly chronological headings. Initially lionised, Lewis was adopted until the 1970s as a magus figure in both nationalism and the language movement. By the late 1970s, however, his conservative politics, including accusations of anti-Semitism and what was perceived as a less than enlightened attitude towards women and the urban working classes, saw him fall into disfavour. The essay concludes with the assertion that Lewis now occupies two discursive territories: as a man of faith removed from temporal concerns and, more tellingly, as a paradigm for Welsh writers in English from David Jones to Emyr Humphreys and R.S. Thomas.