DYLAN THOMAS’ “FERN HILL”: A DESIRE TO REACH THE REAL FROM THE SYMBOLIC, A LACANIAN READING OF THE POEM
Keywords:
the Real, the Imaginary, the Symbolic, language, the Big Other, conscious and the unconscious, Desire
Abstract
Like many other Romantic poets, Dylan Thomas glorifies childhood as an ideal stage of innocence and grace in his poetry which amounts to what Jacques Lacan would call a nostalgic desire for “the Real” from the “Symbolic realm” to regain lost past. Perhaps one of the most celebrated poems of Thomas on the theme of childhood as an ideal stage is “Fern Hill” which, if looked from Lacanian lens, attempts to recreate innocence and grace from intimations of his past glory. This study is an attempt to analyse as to how the poem with a charming opulent imagery overtones Thomas’ sense of eternal loss and helps him sporadically satiate the longing or placate its intensity that continually itches and frustrates him.
