ABSTRACT
Edward Thomas, himself an accomplished folk-singer, argued in The Heart of England that The best [folk songs] seem to be written in a language that should be universal, if only simplicity were truly simple to mankind. Ultimately for Edward Thomas, England does not hold together: as an impossible space it is actually a site of constantly renegotiated conflict between different representations of English identity in which contrasting language and class orders struggle for precedence. Thomas's poetry of encounter, exemplified in a poem like 'Man and Dog', may be viewed through the lens of Zygmunt Bauman's examination of otherness in Postmodern Ethics. Thomas's poetry, it is worth recalling, was composed towards the end of a period of intense political debate on the issue of land reform, an issue reflected and refracted in his writing. Thomas's poetry envisages the life of England in the continuous present, as in 'February Afternoon', where 'Time swims before me, making as a day/ A thousand years'.
