David Jones and Rome

Abstract This interdisciplinary and archival study explores the reception of ancient Rome in the artistic, literary, and philosophical works of David Jones (1895–1974)—the Anglo-Welsh, Roman Catholic, First World War veteran. Across his oeuvre, Jones shaped his innovative conception of contemporary Western civilisational decline on the basis of a complex and dynamic understanding of ancient Rome. His reimagining of Rome was not founded on a classical education, but fashioned from his own experiences, extensive reading, and, most importantly, the dialogues surrounding Rome’s relationship with the modern world which were prevalent in his society. Taking Jones’s Rome as its focus, this book provides an intellectual history of his art and thought. It covers four central areas of twentieth-century discourse that were themselves built upon intricate and conflicting representations of Rome: British political rhetoric, cyclical history, the Catholic cultural revival, and the Welsh nationalist movement. Tracing Jones’s developing approach to Rome across these contexts—through critical analysis of his poetic fragments, watercolours, essays, letters, marginalia, and vast corpus of unique and powerful painted inscriptions—demonstrates how his Roman vision emerged from a deep fear that Western civilisation was in decline and a heartfelt desire to use Rome productively to fight against modern degeneration. In this way, Rome appears in Jones’s works both as a symbol of transhistorical imperialism, totalitarianism, and the mechanisation of life, and simultaneously as the cultural and religious progenitor of the West, and in particular, of Wales, with which the modern world must reconnect if decline was to be avoided.