Love, sadness and other mental states in the Middle Welsh Owain (and related texts)

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the devices employed by the medieval Welsh narrator of Owain, or Chwedyl Iarlles y Ffynnawn (‘The Story of the Lady of the Well’), to convey emotions and the mental states of his characters to his audiences. Although he generally remains inaudible, he uses, at some crucial points, words and phrases denoting emotions in a narrow sense, such as love, sadness and shame, in order to direct and steer the audiences’ perception and their understanding of the narrative. A comparison with thematically related texts, Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain, and its Old Norse, Old Swedish and Middle English translations, helps to assess the narrative role of literary emotions in the Welsh text.