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This article explores the relationship between R. S. Thomas (1913– 2000) and the Calvinistic Methodists, especially William Williams Pantycelyn (1717–91). It suggests that Thomas was drawing on Pantycelyn’s oeuvre and imitating some of his famous images, especially the pilgrim who seeks after an experiential knowledge of God – a God who can be known and felt. Both writers use pilgrim personas to distance and ventriloquise themselves in their work, and yet the poems, in both oeuvres, are written directly out of their own spiritual quests. Their pilgrims travel through literal topographies before turning within: while Pantycelyn’s speaker addresses his sin, Thomas’s speakers’ search for self slowly evolves into a quest for the deus absconditus. Pantycelyn first appears as an iconic figure in the work of Thomas. However, soon enough, Thomas appears to envy the position and status of Pantycelyn as a ‘national poet’ as R.S. looks back at a lost Wales. In Bloomian terms, an agon (contest) develops between the strong precursor poet (Pantycelyn) and the contemporary poet (Thomas), who may be imagined as seeking to banish Pantycelyn – the eternal national poet – in order to clear imaginative space for himself.

‘Ann heard Him speak, and Pantycelyn’: The Unexpected Relationship between R. S. Thomas and the Calvinistic Methodists