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The post-Norman ecclesiastical and political transformation of south-east Wales, recorded in early C12 manuscript. This book explores the ecclesiastical and political transformation of south-east Wales in the later eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Ecclesiastical and administrative reform was one of the defining characteristics of the Norman regime in Britain, and the author argues that a new generation of clergy in South Wales was at the heart of this reforming programme. The focus of this volume is the early twelfth-century Book of Llandaf, one of the most perplexing but exciting historical works from post-Conquest Britain. It has long been viewed as a primary source for the history of early medieval Wales, but here it is presented in a fresh light, as a monument to learning and literature in Norman Wales, produced in the same literary milieu as Geoffrey of Monmouth. As such, the Book of Llandaf provides us with valuable insights into the state of the Norman Church in Wales, and allows us to understand how it thought about its past. JOHN DAVIES is Research Fellow in Scottish History, University of Edinburgh
The essays in this volume, some reprinted in their original form and some extensively revised, are concerned with the Arthurian traditions associated with Glastonbury Abbey. Certain of the essays are analytic and others provide editions of hitherto unknown texts. They all examine ways in which legendary materials and historical facts interconnected in the process by which Glastonbury Abbey came to present itself, nationally and internationally, as the custodian of King Arthur's relics and the burial place of Joseph of Arimathea, and the importance, political and ecclesiastical, that it derived from the connection. Professor JAMES CARLEY is the author of Glastonbury Abbey: The Holy House at t...
King Arthur is arguably the most recognizable literary hero of the European Middle Ages. His stories survive in many genres and many languages, but while scholars and enthusiasts alike know something of his roots in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin History of the Kings of Britain, most are unaware that there was a Latin Arthurian tradition which extended beyond Geoffrey. This collection of essays will highlight different aspects of that tradition, allowing readers to see the well-known and the obscure as part of a larger, often coherent whole. These Latin-literate scholars were as interested as their vernacular counterparts in the origins and stories of Britain's greatest heroes, and they made their own significant contributions to his myth.
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, G...
Writing Welsh History is the first book to explore how the history of Wales and the Welsh has been written over the past fifteen hundred years. By analysing and contextualizing a wide range of historical writing, from Gildas in the sixth century to recent global approaches, it opens new perspectives both on the history of Wales and on understandings of Wales and the Welsh - and thus on the use of the past to articulate national and other identities. The study's broad chronological scope serves to highlight important continuities in interpretations of Welsh history. One enduring preoccupation is Wales's place in Britain. Down to the twentieth century it was widely held that the Welsh were an ...
Knight uses recent archaeological and historical work to examine the emergence of Christianity, literacy and lordship in south Wales.
Revisionist approach to the question of the authenticity - or not - of the documents in the Book of Llandaf.
This is the first full-scale study of the political radicalism of Iolo Morganwg, the renowned Welsh romantic whose colourful life as a Glamorgan stonemason, poet, writer, political activist and humanitarian made him one of the founders of modern Wales. This path-breaking volume offers a vivid portrait of a natural contrarian who tilted against the forces of the establishment for the whole of his adult life. Known as the ‘Bard of Liberty’ or the ’little republican bard’, he moved in highly-politicized circles, embraced republicanism, founded the Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isle of Britain, threw in his lot with Unitarians, promoted a sense of cultural nationalism, and supported the anti-slave trade campaign and the anti-war movement during years of war, oppression and cruelty.
A new and uniquely accessible history of Wales.