In Parenthesis (London: Faber & Faber Ltd., 1978.)
The Anathemata (London: Faber & Faber Ltd., 1952.)
Epoch and Artist (Harman Grisewood, ed. New York: Chilmark Press, 1959.)
The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments (London: Faber & Faber Ltd., 1976.)
The Dying Gaul (London: Faber & Faber Ltd., 1978.)
Blamires contrasts Jones' work with the contemporary (1972) tendency of English poets to focus upon personal experiences and observations, in which the subject is lost "in its degeneration into a preoccupation with formal structure or even typography." Through a study of his visual art, and the application of his artistic training to the writing of his long poems, Blamires presents Jones as an objective, historical poet, who considers personal experience too confining a subject for art and literature, and instead is attracted the social elements of medieval Welsh tradition and Arthurian legends.
Cooper intends to put aside the elaborate background of Arthurian myths and legends in Jones' works in order to concentrate solely upon "Jones' communate skill in visual imaging." But instead of attributing this to Jones' training as a visual artist, Cooper claims that the visual element is necessiated by the war experience itself, as the inability of Jones' speakers to deal with the strange, terrifying situation in which they find themselves. Cooper compares passages from IP with those of James Joyce's Araby in an attempt to demonstrate Jones' awareness of his speaker's psychology in ordering their visual observations.
The most comprehensive look at Jones's poetry to date. Dilworth looks closely at the two long poems, In Parenthesis and The Anathemata in terms of genre, technique, form, and sequence.
Dilsworth argues that Jones manages to complete a task unfinished by High Modernists such as Joyce and Pound; the creation of unity in long non-narrative works. This was made possible by an artistic breakthrough while Jones was working on a series of wood engravings for the book The Chester Play of the Deluge. Dilsworth examines the series of ten engravings, which, he claims, not only follow the temporal structure of the work they accompany, but also possess subtle interrelationships and symmetries that give the book a spatial, visual unity it would not otherwise have.
Continuing to expand upon his theory that Jones accomplished a non-narrative unity in his works unequaled by the High Modernists, Dilsworth takes a closer look at spatial form and structure, and artistic unity in themselves and in relation to the High Modernists' opinions of them. He then applies his conclusions to a cursory discussion of The Anathemata.
Gemmill takes exception to the works of various critics that try to catagorize IP as a novel. Using as her base Jones' essay "Welch Poetry," Gemmill argues that IP is neither a novel nor a poem, but a "narrative," which combines the visual quality of a prose novel with the oral quality of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, yet keeping the element of "story" common to both.
A collection of essays delivered at the David Jones Centenary Conference held at the University of Warwick in 1995. According to Hills, the essays plan to take Jones criticism to a new level, acknowledging how Jones' artistic training influenced his techniques and goals as a writer.
Along with a brief biographical account of Jones' life, this book contains color and black-and-white plates of Jones' works, ranging from the famous "Dancing Bear" of his childhood to "The Four Queens" of 1941.
Miles explores Jones' "intellectual matrices and preoccupations," through a close study of the numerous books Jones himself amassed in that quest. Miles claims that Jones understanding of the topics on which he wrote did not come from an organized branch of learning, but from a "groping for knowledge along branches which proliferate from a central trunk of concerns." Much of this enquiry will be shown to be related to Jones' need to understand what he as an artist was actually doing when he practiced his art. Miles focuses upon the influences of Eric Gill, Oswald Spengler, Geology texts, Arthurian legends, and Welsh traditions in an attempt to answer this question.
Murray argues that Jones' primary drive in IP is not just to honour his fallen comrades in the War, but is also about a mode of vision, a first essay on perspective, which gives common experiences an imaginative presence, and allows one glimpses of an ultimate significance in life.
Raine reinstates Jones' belief in Man as a "sign-making" animal, imparting meaning to the objects he finds in his environment, creating an interior dimension of significance and sacrament through this relationship.
Sherry responds to the difficulty of Jones' symbolism, which seems, to some critics, to "glorify an inglorious war." He argues that Jones has the ability to manage a reader's response to a symbol, presenting it, through the use of the dramatic monologue, as an ideal genre for which readers can gain a sympathetic understanding of the narrator presenting the symbol and the contextual meanings behind it.
Spears attempts to redeem Jones from his crtical reputation as a "Roman Catholic cult hero," claiming instead that Jones' central effort is not religious, but secular, namely, restoring communion to the human community, sharing devotions, rites, and rituals.
Staudt discusses Thomas Dilworth's book The Shape of Meaning in the Poetry of David Jones. Although she commends Dilsworth for his analysis through most of the book, she diagrees with his insistence that Jones always maintained a strict coherence and unity in his works, formal if not contextual. Staudt maintains that there are places in Jones' works where he deliberately fails to accommodate its details into a unifying vision, leaving a series of unanswered questions.
Staudt reviews four recent (1985) books on Jones, W. Blissett's Long Conversations, N. Corcoran's Song of Deeds, T. Dilworth's Inner Necessities, and E. Ward's David Jones:Mythmaker.