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This impressive book reveals surprising new facts about the man who still fires the Welsh imagination, Owain Glyndwr, through rigorous assessment of evidence in contemporary manuscripts and printed sources. Color photos.
This book is a comprehensive single-volume history of literature in the two major languages of Wales from post-Roman to post-devolution Britain.
Ovid's rarely studied Ibis is an elegiac companion-piece to the Tristia and Ex Ponto written after his banishment to the Black Sea in AD 8. Modelled on a poem of the same name by the Hellenistic poet Callimachus, Ibis stands out as an artistically contrived explosion of vitriol against an unnamed enemy who is characterised in terms of the Egyptian bird with its unprepossessing habits. Based in a tradition of curse-ritual, it is the most difficult of Ovid's poems to penetrate. Robinson Ellis's edition remains an indispensable - if typically eccentric - platform for the study of the poem's obscurities. Indeed Ellis deserves the primary credit for bringing Ibis back from obscurity into the light of day.This reissue of Ellis's 1881 edition includes a new introduction by Gareth Williams setting the edition in the context of earlier and later developments in scholarship. Ellis's edition not only made a significant contribution to research into the Ibis, it is an important representative of a particular vein of scholarship prevalent in nineteenth-century Latin study.
"How Green Was My Valley" is Richard Llewellyn's bestselling -- and timeless -- classic and the basis of a beloved film. As Huw Morgan is about to leave home forever, he reminisces about the golden days of his youth when South Wales still prospered, when coal dust had not yet blackened the valley. Drawn simply and lovingly, with a crisp Welsh humor, Llewellyn's characters fight, love, laugh and cry, creating an indelible portrait of a people.
A beautiful volume to treasure, comprising thirteen stories skillfully depicting the age of Owain Glyndwr by means of a mixture of legend and history.
Secret Oswestry explores the lesser-known history of the Shropshire town of Oswestry through a fascinating selection of stories, unusual facts and attractive photographs.
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 ...
‘Weaving together science, history, antiquarianism and art, this stimulating collection of essays amply demonstrates Thomas Pennant’s centrality to a broad range of British Enlightenment debates and discourses, especially those relating to Britain’s so-called “Celtic Fringe”. At the same time, it underscores the epistemological importance of travel and travel writing in the late eighteenth century.’ —Carl Thompson, Senior Lecturer in English, St Mary’s University, UK
The Tudor era has long been associated with the rise of nationalism in England, yet nationalist writing in this period often involved the denigration and outright denial of Englishness. Philip Schwyzer argues that the ancient, insular, and imperial nation imagined in the works of writers such as Shakespeare and Spenser was not England, but Britain. Disclaiming their Anglo-Saxon ancestry, the English sought their origins in a nostalgic vision of British antiquity. Focusing on texts including The Faerie Queene, English and Welsh antiquarian works, The Mirror for Magistrates, Henry V and King Lear, Schwyzer charts the genesis, development and disintegration of British nationalism in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. An important contribution to the expanding scholarship on early modern Britishness, this study gives detailed attention to Welsh texts and traditions, arguing that Welsh sources crucially influenced the development of English literature and identity.
Medieval Welsh literature is rich in hagiographical lore and numerous Welsh versions of the Lives of saints are extant, recording the legends of both native and universal saints. Although the cult of St Ursula and the 11,000 virgins is well known internationally, this is the first time that a scholarly edition of her Welsh legend has been published in its entirety. Hystoria Gweryddon yr Almaen was adapted into Welsh by Sir Huw Pennant and it survives in a unique manuscript – Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 182 (c. 1509–1514). The edition is accompanied by a full glossary, as well as detailed textual and linguistic notes, and information on the development and transmission of the legend. The peculiarities of the Welsh text are considered in the introduction as well as the similarities it shares with other versions. The volume also considers the wider cultural context of the legend and discusses the Welsh cult of St Ursula and her companions. Welsh tradition claims that Ursula was Welsh and she became associated with the church at Llangwyryfon in Ceredigion and other minor Welsh chapels.