Emyr Humphreys. Diane Green

Humphreys’s career that his Welshness became a recognized part of his identity; he had at this point ‘reinvented’ himself to an extent as an heir of Welsh-language culture. Thirdly, it introduced new methods of patterning, which were to be further refined in the writing of Outside the House of Baal (1965). These two novels, it might be argued, are the author’s major achievements. The later novel is cited by critics as Humphreys’s best⁵⁸ and A Toy Epic is frequently the reader’s introduction to Humphreys’s work and a popular text for students.

      In A Toy Epic the three boys are on one level representative characters, the author’s way of showing different aspects of Welsh society between the wars. A Man’s Estate initiated the use of narration through a variety of voices but A Toy Epic develops the use of frequently changing voices in the first person. The action of A Toy Epic is a way of presenting Welsh history in the interwar years, showing how the events of the history textbook affected the lives of ordinary people in north Wales. The myths dealt with in Ovid’s Metamorphoses are used as a theme which connects the various experiences of the three adolescents, and as a way of making individual experience general and of showing how archetypal patterns recur throughout time. This is achieved in two ways: through explicit references to Ovid as an author being studied during the boys’ education in the novel and through allusions in the text to various mythological characters. Simultaneously, metamorphosis, or transformation of character through sexual experience, is the underlying theme and connects the boys and their individual experiences together to form a unified whole. This is both a more complex and a less controlling use of myth than Humphreys had achieved before; it allows the author more freedom with his text and the reader does not feel the eventual outcome of the narrative is heavily predestined, as it could be argued is the case with the previous two novels. An examination of the author’s notebooks containing the early version shows that none of this mythological material was there;⁵⁹ it was clearly superimposed on the original alongside other changes made by Humphreys before the 1958 publication. Having written six novels, with varying success, in which myth is used as a patterning device in a variety of ways, from mere allusion to complete replication, Humphreys finds a way in this novel to use myth without being over-constrained by it. He makes use of its allusive power and its significance, whilst still allowing himself the freedom of inventing the plot. In the first six novels the attempts to add structural patterning by outside means were all too much or too little. In this novel the author begins to get it right. However, the myths used are dominantly classical; Humphreys is keen to discuss Wales as ‘subject’ but has not yet developed the desire to educate or refresh Welsh people in their native myths.

       Presenting Wales

      Wales is the subject of the novel, and is presented in several complementary ways. The principal way is through the three boys, the voices of the text: Albie, Michael and Iorwerth.⁶⁰ The three boys stand as independent characters but they are also representative of aspects of Welsh life. Simultaneously, they represent three different family circumstances, three social backgrounds, three geographical areas and three attitudes to Welsh political concerns. Together they present a picture of Welsh society between the wars. Humphreys isolates the north-east corner of Wales for his presentation, but it could be argued that the novel looks at north Wales in general, or even Wales as a whole.⁶¹ These boys are all Welsh with differing attitudes to Wales. Humphreys looks at their influence upon each other, the ways they interact and the way the passing of time and the imminent war lead to their separation rather than integration.