Dafydd ap Gwilym and the debt to Europe

Abstract

My discussion aims not so much to provide an answer to the thorny question of whether Dafydd ap Gwilym was a Europhile - this has been attempted by many a critic — as to examine the way in which this question has become the accepted framework within which to study Dafydd’s work. In my introductory section I discuss the ways in which criticism has investigated Dafydd’s possible debt to Continental traditions, with special reference to love poems (which have most frequently been juxtaposed to French models) ; this is followed by a reading of Morfudd fel yr Haul. Then I outline the case for Dafydd’s possible debt to a sub-literary tradition, before concentrating, in my concluding section, on his so-called ‘fabliau’ poems. In my discussion of Trajferth Mewn Tafarn and Cyfeddach, I explore the implications of using imported frameworks for reading Dafydd’s poetry, and question the appropriateness of the classification of certain of his poems as ‘fabliau type’. I suggest that the investigation of the European dimension, with its necessary bias towards ‘influence’ and ‘source’ studies, is not the only respectable scholarly activity, and is a tendency that has sometimes eclipsed the sophistication of Dafydd ap Gwilym’s individual texts. I end with another type of debt to Europe, that owed by Dafydd ap Gwilym studies today to critics Chotzen and Stern, not only for their painstaking detective work, but for treating him as the equal of his more famous Continental counterparts.