Welsh Literature Research Articles

A Bibliography of Welsh Literature in English Translation200621Edited by S. Rhian Reynolds. A Bibliography of Welsh Literature in English Translation. Cardiff: The Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales/University of Wales Press 2005. xl + 242 pp., ISBN: 0 7083 1882 7 £25, $69.95

A Bibliography of Welsh Literature in English Translation200621Edited by S. Rhian Reynolds. <i>A Bibliography of Welsh Literature in English Translation</i>. Cardiff: The Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales/University of Wales Press 2005. xl + 242 pp., ISBN: 0 7083 1882 7 £25, $69.95

Arthur in Medieval Welsh Literature by O. J. Padel (review)

Arthur in Medieval Welsh Literature by O. J. Padel (review)

PADEL, O.: Arthur in the Medieval Welsh literature

PADEL, O.: Arthur in the Medieval Welsh literature

Arthur in Medieval Welsh Literature. O. J. Padel

<i>Arthur in Medieval Welsh Literature</i>. O. J. Padel

Arthur in Medieval Welsh Literature

Arthur in Medieval Welsh Literature

Arthur in Medieval Welsh Literature

Arthur in Medieval Welsh Literature

Qui croit au retour d'Arthur ?

It has often been stated that a belief in King Arthur's return was commonly held among twelfth and thirteenth-century insular and continental Britons. Nevertheless, the medieval sources used as evidence seem to repeat a stereotype, rather than report an objective fact. Examination of other literary and historical sources (medieval Welsh literature, historical studies on Wales and Brittany, studies on messianic movements) do not show that this belief was significant outside of Arthurian fiction. Who believes in Arthur's return ? Always someone else.

A Guide to Welsh literature c.1800‐1900200126Edited by Hywel Teifi Edwards. A Guide to Welsh literature c.1800‐1900 . Cardiff: University of Wales Press 2000. viii + 247 pp, ISBN: 0 7083 1605 0 £14.99 Guide to Welsh Literature Volume 5

A Guide to Welsh literature c.1800‐1900200126Edited by Hywel Teifi Edwards. <i>A Guide to Welsh literature c.1800‐1900 </i>. Cardiff: University of Wales Press 2000. viii + 247 pp, ISBN: 0 7083 1605 0 £14.99 Guide to Welsh Literature Volume 5

Introduction

Introduction ELISSA R. HENKEN Arthurian literature has ever been characterized by its ability to cross cultural .. and linguistic boundaries and to develop new forms, by its ability to share symbols and themes across cultural divides, remaining truly contemporary in every age. Nevertheless, it is good from time to time to return to consider the literature of Arthur and his court in the culture that carries the earliest record ofthese in tradition and literature. As it spread through other cultures, the Arthurian tradition in Wales by no means ossified; it underwent its own literary development which, while reflecting and interacting with its own prolific progeny, responded to and addressed the changing needs ofspecifically Welsh society. The scholars who focus on Wales and work mainly on Welsh literature have, therefore, of necessity been cognizant of and taken into consideration both literary and analytic developments elsewhere. Thus, this issue, devoted to a discussion of Welsh Arthurian texts, addresses matters pertinent to all Arthurian literature and applies techniques relevant to Arthurian scholarship anywhere. When I was asked to edit this issue, I decided to sample the varied and vigorous scholarship being carried out on both sides of the Atlantic. I took the opportunity to invite established scholars and also to provide a platform for younger scholars. However, I left the choice of topics open so that the authors might pursue what most intrigued them at the time. Only one of the five chose to examine a 'native' Welsh text, Culhwch and Olwen; the other four not only chose the more European-influenced romances, but also divided their energies evenly between only two ofthem—Owein and Peredur. Their choices are in themselves interesting, but ofgreater immediate import is that having two approaches to each text both adds to our understanding ofthe individual texts and gives greater depth to this special issue. Michael Cichon and Carl Lindahl both examine Owein with the aid of other texts and both stress the contemporaneity of the narrative, but where Cichon refers to the Law texts to explicate certain details and recover deeper meanings that would have been readily recognizable to the thirteenth-century audience, Lindahl refers to other texts to shed light not just on Owein but on the whole (re-)creative process ofcultural translation. Brynley F. Roberts ARTHURIANA IO-3 (2OOO) 4 ARTHURIANA and John K. Bollard both present the order of episodes and placement of manuscript breaks as evidence in their examination of Peredur, but while Roberts determines that the long and short versions are two separate, complete, and equally valid narratives, Bollard concerns himself with the long version and treats the short one as defective and truncate. Roberts and Bollard differ on a number ofother points of interpretation as well, such as Peredur's instructions from his mother or the contextual meaning ofcynnydd, but their scholarly disagreement both highlights points for further investigation and discussion and reminds us that when we explore the questions posed by literatures of cultures and periods other than our own, the answers are rarely either simple or definitive. Demonstrating the need to take into consideration the full range oftexture, text, and context from the smallest textual details to the largest cultural concerns, the articles in this collection prove useful guides in the reading not only of specifically Welsh texts but also more generally of medieval literature. At one end of the scale, one need look not just at the words but also at the way they appear in the manuscript, how large initials and formulae mark the various narrative segments. At the other end, one need keep in mind the socio-cultural context in which the redactions were prepared. Two articles in particular stress the value ofculturally sensitive reading, and both accomplish it through comparative study with other texts. Cichon, in comparing Owein with Welsh legal texts, illuminates the social realities and concerns which informed the redactors. Lindahl, in comparing Owein with both French literary texts and historical developments in Welsh society, reveals Owein, no matter what its sources, as firmly set in thirteenth-century Wales and as an invaluable aid for understanding that period. All of the articles confirm a lesson too often ignored: not to make assumptions about what...

Insult and Redress in Cyfraith Hywel Dda and Welsh Arthurian Romance

This article, treating the laws in their context as well as specific legal references in the Romances, examines the transactional nature of insult and redress as portrayed in medieval Welsh law and literature. The laws contain commentary on hierarchy and behavior, and the narratives show to some extent how the laws worked. Both shed light on the values of the society that produced the literature.

The New companion to the literature of Wales

This volume provides a reference to Anglo-Welsh and Welsh literature. It has been corrected, updated and revised since its original printing in 1986 and includes over 150 new pages, 400 new sections including contemporary writers, and features over 320 contributors and 3300 entries.

Book reviews

Books reviewed: Medieval Germany, 500–1300, A Political Interpretation. By Benjamin Arnold. Medieval Welsh Literature. By Andrew Breeze. Bede on Tobit and on the Canticle of Habakkuk. Dublin: Four Courts Press. Two Old English Apocrypha and their Manuscript Source: ‘The Gospel of Nichodemus’ and ‘The Avenging of the Saviour’. Edited by J.E. Cross. The Emergence of Rus 750–1200. By Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard. Language and History in Early England. By Helmut Gneuss. The Philosophy of Peter Abelard. By John Marenbon. Gregory the Great and His World. By Robert Markus. The Text of the Old Testament in Anglo‐Saxon England. By Richard Marsden. Medieval Liturgy. A Book of essays. Edited by Lizette Larson Miller. The Composition of Old English Poetry. Cambridge Studies in Anglo‐Saxon England 20. By H. Momma. Old English Biblical Verse: Studies in Genesis, Exodus and Daniel. By Paul G. Remley. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings. Edited by Peter Sawyer. Naissance de la Bretagne. Géographie historique et structures sociales de la Bretagne méridionale (Nantais et Vannetais) de la fin du VIIIe à la fin du XIIe siècle. By Nöel‐Yves Tonnerre. Topographie chrétrenne des cités de la Gaule des origines au milieu du VIIIe siècle. Gen. ed. Nancy Gauthier and Jean‐Charles Picard.

Wales and the Reformation

and the is the first full-length study of one of the most significant phases in the history of Wales. Such neglect is surprising given the formative part played by the Reformation in shaping the subsequent destinies of Wales and its people. What is less surprising is that Sir Glanmor Williams has now remedied this deficiency with a work of scholarship that is magisterial in content and polished in style. In the sixteenth century the Roman Church which, for centuries, had regulated religion in Wales was ousted and replaced by a state-established Church, of which the monarch was constituted Supreme Head. It soon became obvious to a small group of intellectuals and reformers that the use of English to impose modifications to traditional worship and belief upon a mainly Welsh-speaking populace would be unlikely to succeed among the mass of the people. From mid-century onwards, therefore, there were determined attempts both to secure adherence to reformed doctrine and to safeguard the native cultural inheritance by means of Welsh translations of the Bible, Prayer Book, and other literature.The translation of the Bible into Welsh was probably the key factor in retaining the native language; it ensured the success of Welsh literature, tied the clergy to Welsh culture, and inspired confidence in the continuance of Welsh nationhood. Slow though progress was in many respects the indispensable translations were achieved and the Welsh were set on the road to becoming a fervent Protestant nation. The switch of allegiance from Rome was neither simple nor straightforward; it provoked great upheaval and confusion, in which secular concerns and material interests became entangled with cultural and devotional consequences. In and the Glanmor Williams succeeds in unfolding this complex story in a lucid and readable fashion.

Andrew Breeze, Medieval Welsh literature

Andrew Breeze, <i>Medieval Welsh literature</i>

Medieval Welsh literature

Medieval Welsh literature

The Arthur of the Welsh: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature ed. by Rachel Bromwich, A.O.H. Jarman, and Brynley F. Roberts (review)

reviews83 rachel bromwich, a.o.h. jarman, and brynley f. roberts, eds., TheArthur ofthe Welsh: TheArthurian Legendin MedievalWebh Literature. Cardiff: University ofWales Press, 1991; rpt. 1995. isbn: 0-7083-1307-8. $25. This volume is the first fruit ofa projected revision, undertaken by the EugeneVinavcr Memorial Trust, of R.S. Loomis's Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1959). It considers the Celtic historical and literary sources of the Arthurian legend, the subject matter of ALMA chapters 1-8, 12, and 16. The thirteen essays, all by leading scholars of Welsh literature and history, offer readers access to recent scholarship that has been difficult to keep abreast of, especially on this side of the Atlantic. Its appearance in an affordable paperback edition is most welcome. Taken together, the introduction and the first chapter reexamine theWelsh, Gaelic, and insular Latin sources for the 'historical' Arthur. Ofthese, the traditional linchpin has been the ninth-century Historia Brittonum, andThomas Charles-Edwards devotes his chapter on 'The Arthur ofHistory' to a scrutiny ofthat text and ofthe critique to which it has been subjected by David Dumville. In a densely textured analysis CharlesEdwards argues that the Arthurian chapters have more to tell us about the structure ofthe Historia Brittonum than they do about an historical Arthur. Similarly, Brynley Roberts sees the determining Arthur of Geoffrey of Monmouth in terms of the structure of the Historia Regum Britanniae. Throughout the two chapters that he contributes, however, Roberts emphasizes the continuity ofGeoffrey's history ofBritain with a coherent Welsh Arthurian tradition that he enlarged and Normanized but did not betray. He shows, too, in his discussion of the Welsh versions of the Historia, how Geoffrey fed the same tradition upon which he had drawn. Roberts's discussion of Culhwch ac Olwen underscores the shift in recent scholarship towards an appreciation of the talc's literary, as opposed to oral-traditional qualities. His brief treatment, in the same chapter, of certain of the Triads, distinguishes the fuller narratives in the later recensions from the more obscure allusions ofthe earlier. Like much else in the book, these sections remind us that our written sources are not simply windows upon an oral tradition that lies behind them. At the same time, the poems, the Triads, Culhwch ac Olwen, and the saints' lives—whose importance as vessels ofArthurian legend in Brittany and Wales is here acknowledged—do seem to draw upon a thematically coherent, though far from single and linear, body oftradition about Arthur. The Triads, discussed in a chapter ofALMA by Rachel Bromwich, who subsequently produced—and later revised and expanded—an invaluable edition of this compendium of Welsh lore, are here discussed in either Chapter 3 or Chapter 9, according as they reflect early tradition or the influence ofFrench romance. Bromwich herselfdraws on her intimate knowledge of and long reflection upon the Triads in her thoroughgoing review ofthe evidence for Welsh elements in the Tristan legend. A.O.H. Jarman updates his own account in ALMA ofthe Merlin legend in Welsh. Patrick Sims-Williams brings to his examination of 'The Early Welsh Arthurian Poems' the linguistic, literary, and codicological insights ofthe thirty years that elapsed between KennethJackson's discussion ofthe same material in ALMA and the original arthuriana 6.3 (1996) reviews84 publication of this collection in 1991. A very useful framework for this discussion is provided in the description, by the editors and by Daniel Huws, of the medieval manuscripts inwhich theWelsh language materials ofArthurian legend and literature are preserved. The three Welsh tales with analogues in the work ofChretien—Gereintfab Erbin, Owein, and Peredur—receive a chapter each here, by Roger Middleton, R.L.Thomson, and Ian Lovecy, respectively. All three focus on the adaptation of common story material to Welsh narrative style, and to whatJack Goody calls 'the interface between the written and the oral' reflected in the texts, rather than to questions ofsource and primacy. Another change in the structure ofthe material is that BreuddwydRhonabwy is quite properly separated from the older Culhwch ac Olwen, and discussed instead in conjunction with other late medieval and early modern Welsh Arthurian texts. Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan does a fine job of delineating the issues associated with Breuddwyd...

Internal Difference: Twentieth-Century Writing in Wales

Thomas (English, U. College, Swansea, Wales) focuses on Welsh literature written in English during the 20th century, to illustrate the divergent, and often clashing, views of modern Wales and Welsh identity. His comparisons put some strange fellows in the same bed: Alun Lewis and Alun Llywelyn-Willi

Oral and dialect in early Welsh literature

L'un des problemes les plus importants de la litterature galloise est le passage de la forme orale a la forme ecrite. L'auteur cherche a distinguer dans les formes premieres de la langue ecrite ce qui revient a la langue orale et au dialecte

The Arthur of the Welsh: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature ed. by Rachel Bromwich, A. O. H. Jarman, Brynley F. Roberts

REVIEWS concern for moralization, the anxiety toward literary interpretation, the interest in correcting Chaucer's prosody-need to be taken into account to explain eighteenth-century modernization in theory and in practice. Such a theory might also explain why Chaucer's original finally seems more modern than do any of these more recent adaptations. This double-column edition is readable, though at sixty-three lines per column the type is admittedly small. Line numbers have been added, and parallel lines are noted parenthetically, though "parallel" is defined broadly. Footnotes appear sporadically. A brief biographical introduction precedes and textual information follows each modernization. ANNA BATIIGELLI State University of New York at Plattsburgh RACHEL BROMWICH, A. 0. H. JARMAN, and BRYNLEY E ROBERTS, eds. The Arthur ofthe Welsh: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991. Pp. xiv, 310. $55.00. In 1959 Oxford University Press published Arthunan Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History, which soon became an essential book for all students of Arthurian literature. Comprising forty-one essays by thirty eminent scholars, it surveys the facts, documents, and specula­ tions concerning Arthurian material across Europe from its first appearance in written sources through the work of Malory. It is an immensely useful project, and references to ALMA have steadily appeared in the footnotes of Arthurian studies ever since. An especially valuable dimension of ALMA's contribution is the inclusion of a substantial group of essays on Arthurian material in Welsh. This undoubtedly reflects the interest of the editor, Roger Sherman Loomis, who had long sought to establish the origins of Arthurian themes and characters in the literary, historical, and mythologi­ cal traditions of the Celtic peoples, particularly the Welsh. It cannot be said that the essays by Welsh scholars in ALMA give strong support to Loomis's theories, but they do open a window onto the isolated field of Celtic studies and transmit to a wider world a large fund of specific information regarding the figure of Arthur in Welsh tradition. Here are, in early historical writings, glimpses of Arthur and his men in battle against 169 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER the Saxons centuries earlier, enigmatic references to lost stories about them in early Welsh poems and bardic lists, andcomplete Arthurian narratives in polished Welsh prose. In 1985 the Vinaver Memorial Trust of the British Branch of the Interna­ tional Arthurian Society decided to commission a series of volumes that would "supplement and revise" ALMA in the light of recent scholarship and thinking. The Arthur ofthe Welsh: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature (henceforth AOW') is the first volume of that projected senes. Going well beyond simply reconsidering the Welsh essays in ALMA (chapters 1-8, 12, and 16), most of the essays in AOWare completely new work by different hands. Two of the original contributors to ALMA appear again: A. 0. H.Jarman has greatly expanded his earlier discussion of the legends and poems associated with the Welsh figure of Myrddin (Merlin), and Rachel Bromwich, whose earlier essay on the Welsh Triads unfortu­ nately has been dropped, has two new essays, one on the surviving Welsh fragments (disappointingly few and late) of the Tristan story and another on "First Transmission to England and France," especially valuable for its discussion of the personal names of Welsh, Cornish, and Breton origin that appear in the Latin and French Arthurian works of the twelfthcentury. In a field where hard evidence is difficult to find, that substantial body of names, she points out, "constitutes the most important and incontroverti­ ble evidence for the Celtic contribution to Arthurian romance." Two works of the Latin chronicle tradition that have always been impor­ tant to studies of Arthur are the ninth-century Historia Brittonum (long attributed to "Nennius"), which lists twelve victorious battles fought by Arthur against the Saxons, and the twelfth-century Histon'aRegum Bn'tan­ nz'ae, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, which presents a picture of the whole reign of Arthur so compelling that very little Arthurian material, Welsh included, was afterward untouched by its influence. Both works receive in AOWcareful discussion that reflects an interesting shift of attention away from gleaning historical evidence...

The Arthur of the Welsh: the Arthurian legend in medieval Welsh literature

Little, if anything, is known historically of Arthur, yet for centuries the romances of Arthur and his court dominated the imaginative literature of Europe in many languages. The roots of this vast flowering of the Arthurian legend are to be found in early Welsh tradition, and this volume gives an account of the Arthurian literature produced in Wales, in both Welsh and Latin, during the Middle Ages. The distinguished contributors offer a comprehensive view of recent scholarship relating to Arthurian literature in early Welsh and other Brythonic sources. The volume includes chapters on the 'historical' Arthur, Arthur in early Welsh verse, the legend of Merlin, the tales of Culhwch ac Olwen, Geraint, Owain, Peredur, The Dream of Rhonabwy and Trystan ac Esyllt. Other chapters investigate the evidence for the growth of the Arthurian theme in the Triads and in the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and discuss the Breton connection and the gradual transmission of the legend to the non-Celtic world. The volume, which is unique in offering a comprehensive discussion of the subject, will appeal widely to medievalists, to Welsh and Celtic scholars, and to those non-specialists who have felt the fascination of the figure of Arthur and wish to know more.