Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism | Thomas, Dylan - Richard Kelly (essay date 1969)

Richard Kelly (essay date 1969)

SOURCE: “The Lost Vision in Dylan Thomas' ‘One Warm Saturday’”, in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. VI, No. 2, Winter, 1969, pp.

[In the following essay, Kelly believes that the themes and structure of Thomas's short story “One Warm Saturday” are derived from James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.]

“One Warm Saturday,” the last story in Dylan Thomas: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, shares with Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man the theme of a quest for perfection of the profane world. Thomas' flippant title, however, provides a significant clue to the outcome of his version of a youth's search for what Joyce calls “the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld.”¹ Although Thomas' story may be read and enjoyed without any reference to Joyce, a critical reading of “One Warm Saturday” that takes Joyce into account...

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