Introduction

Abstract The Introduction begins by laying out David Jones’s concerns around the decline of Western civilisation and traces his decision to turn to ancient Rome to explore contemporary issues of decline and cultural renewal. It sets his approach within the contexts central to the study: political rhetoric, cyclical history, Catholic cultural theory, and Welsh nationalism. While providing a brief overview of current scholarship on Jones and on the reception of ancient Rome in twentieth-century discourse, it observes how Jones’s idiosyncratic approach to Rome was shaped by his unconventional education and his artistic intentions. It then makes the case for examining Jones’s reimagining of Rome holistically, in an interdisciplinary fashion and founded on extensive archival research so as to position his diverse works within their shifting intellectual contexts. After setting out the overarching structure and summaries of the chapters, it ends with an analysis of Jones’s poem ‘A, a, a, Domine Deus’.