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This book is a comprehensive single-volume history of literature in the two major languages of Wales from post-Roman to post-devolution Britain.
For a small land, Wales has produced an extraordinarily large and accomplished body of literature. The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales provides an excellent guide to Welsh literary heritage, ranging from the Druids and the days of King Arthur to the present-day flowering of Welsh national consciousness. In a little less than 3,000 entries, it captures the complexities of Welsh poetic art, the lives and achievements of its greatest writers, the myths, legends and colorful folktales, and the events and movements that have informed its history. A wealth of detailed information, the Companion is indispensable for anyone interested in the literature and culture of Wales.
This book explores how that love influenced Tolkien's ideas about linguistic taste, his invention of languages, many of the themes and motifs in his creative writing, and his sense of a (regional) English identity. Drawing on unpublished material as well as Tolkien's published fiction, poetry and academic writing, Tolkien and Wales describes more fully than ever before the extent and depth of Tolkien's debt to the Welsh language and Welsh literature. It also argues that Tolkien's love of Wales and Welsh is inseparable from his love of England and his sense of belonging to the border country of the West Midlands. Besides discussing such famous books as The Hobbil and The Lord of the Rings, particular attention is paid to relatively neglected texts such as Tolkien's lecture on 'English and Welsh' and a poem that he published in The Welsh Review, The Lay of Aotrou and Iotroun. Where earlier scholarship has addressed Tolkien's debt to Welsh it has tended to do so in the context of 'Celtic' influence in general, but this book shows that Tolkien had very different attitudes to different Celtic languages. Tolkien and Wales reveals the seminal influence of Wales and Welsh on the writings of the twentieth century's most popular writer. Book jacket.
Some of the most exciting writers in and from Wales consider the future of Wales and the UK and their place in it. What does it mean to imagine Wales and ‘The Welsh’ as something both distinct and inclusive? In Welsh (Plural), some of the foremost Welsh writers consider the future of Wales and their place in it. For many people, Wales brings to mind the same old collection of images – if it’s not rugby, sheep and leeks, it’s the 3 Cs: castles, coal, and choirs. Heritage, mining and the church are indeed integral parts of Welsh culture. But what of the other stories that point us toward a Welsh future? In this anthology of essays, authors offer imaginative, radical perspectives on the future of Wales as they take us beyond the clichés and binaries that so often shape thinking about Wales and Welshness. Includes essays from Charlotte Williams (A Tolerant Nation?), Joe Dunthorne (Submarine, The Adulterants), Niall Griffiths (Sheepshagger, Broken Ghost), Rabab Ghazoul (Gentle / Radical Turner Prize Nominee), Mike Parker (On the Red Hill), Martin Johnes (Wales Since 1939, Wales: England’s Colony?), Kandace Siobhan Walker (2019 Guardian 4th Estate Prize Winner), Gary Raymond (Golden Orphans, Wales Arts Review, BBC Wales), Darren Chetty (The Good Immigrant), Andy Welch (The Guardian), Marvin Thompson (Winner 2021 UK Poetry Prize), Durre Shahwar (Where I’m Coming From), Hanan Issa (My Body Can House Two Hearts), Dan Evans (Desolation Radio), Shaheen Sutton, Morgan Owen, Iestyn Tyne, Grug Muse and Cerys Hafana.
Between Wales and England is an exploration of eighteenth-century anglophone Welsh writing by authors for whom English-language literature was mostly a secondary concern. In its process, the work interrogates these authors’ views on the newly-emerging sense of ‘Britishness’, finding them in many cases to be more nuanced and less resistant than has generally been considered. It looks primarily at the English-language works of Lewis Morris, Evan Evans, and Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg) in the context of both their Welsh- and English-language influences and time spent travelling between the two countries, considering how these authors responded to and reimagined the new national identity through their poetry and prose.
Contributes to the fields of Welsh Studies, Comparative Studies, Transatlantic Studies Offers analyses of key chapters in the cultural making of modern Wales. Offers insights into national and ethnic identity, and encourages readers to consider the extent of Welsh tolerance and intolerance. Draws on Welsh and English language sources, and ranges across literature, history, music and political thought. The book is an example of Welsh cultural studies in action. The book intervenes in key debates within cultural studies: nationalism and assimilationism; language and race; class and identity; cultural identity and political citizenship
Ranging from the nineteenth-century to the present, this book explores several central aspects of the ways in which the English-language poetry and fiction of Wales has responded to what was, for a crucial period of a century or so, the dominant culture of Wales: the culture of Welsh Nonconformity. In the introduction, the author reflects on why no sustained attempt has hitherto been made to investigate one of the formative cultural influences on modern 'Anglo-Welsh' literature, the Nonconformist inheritance. The importance of addressing this strange and significant cultural deficit is then explained, and a preliminary attempt made to capture something of the spirit of Welsh Nonconformity. The succeeding chapters address and seek to answer such questions as: What exactly did the Welsh chapels believe and do? Why have the English-language writers of Wales, from Caradoc Evans and Dylan Thomas to R.S. Thomas and the authors of today, been so fascinated by them? How accurate are the impressions we've been given of chapel life and chapel people in the English-language poetry and fiction of Wales? The answers offered may alter our views both of the Welsh Nonconformist past and of Welsh writing in English. One of the ideas advanced is that many of Wales' most important writers went to war with the preachers in their texts, and that their work is therefore the site of cultural struggle. Theirs was a war in words waged to determine who would have the last word on modern Welsh experience.
A WWII-era Welsh barmaid begins a secret relationship with a German POW in this “beautiful” novel by the author of A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself (Ann Patchett). Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Set in the stunning landscape of North Wales just after D-Day, this critically acclaimed debut novel traces the intersection of disparate lives in wartime. When a prisoner-of-war camp is established near her village, seventeen-year-old barmaid Esther Evans finds herself strangely drawn to the camp and its forlorn captives. She is exploring the camp boundary when an astonishing thing occurs: A young German corporal calls out to her from behind the fence. From that moment on, the two begin an unlikely—and perilous—romance. Meanwhile, a German-Jewish interrogator travels to Wales to investigate Britain’s most notorious Nazi prisoner, Rudolf Hess. In this richly drawn and thought-provoking “tour de force,” all will come to question the meaning of love, family, loyalty, and national identity (The New Yorker). “If you loved The English Patient, there’s probably a place in your heart for The Welsh Girl.” —USA Today “Davies’s characters are marvelously nuanced.” —Los Angeles Times “Beautifully conjures a place and its people, in an extraordinary time . . . A rare gem.” —Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs “This first novel by Davies, author of two highly praised short story collections, has been anticipated—and, with its wonderfully drawn characters, it has been worth the wait.” —Booklist, starred review
Although the legends of Arthur have been popular throughout Europe from the Middle Ages onwards, the earliest references to Arthur are to be found in Welsh literature, starting with the Welsh-Latin Historia Brittonum dating from the ninth century. By the twelfth century, Arthur was a renowned figure wherever Welsh and her sister languages were spoken. O. J. Padel now provides an overall survey of medieval Welsh literary references to Arthur and emphasizes the importance of understanding the character and purpose of the texts in which allusions to Arthur occur. Texts from different genres are considered together, and shed new light on the use that different authors make of the multifaceted figure of Arthur – from the folk legend associated with magic and animals to the literary hero, soldier and defender of country and faith. Other figures associated with Arthur, such as Cai, Bedwyr and Gwenhwyfar, are also discussed here.
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