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Andrew Breeze | |
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| Born | |
| Nationality | English |
| Citizenship | United Kingdom |
| Known for | Historical linguistics Philology of Celtic languages Onomastics, especially place-names |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge, University of Oxford |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Linguistics [1] |
| Institutions | University of Navarra (previously at Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies) |
Andrew Breeze FRHistS FSA (born 1954),has been professor of philology at the University of Navarra since 1987. [2]
Breeze was born in 1954 and educated at Sir Roger Manwood's School,Emmanuel College,Cambridge (where he took a first in English in 1974 and in Anglo-Saxon,Norse and Celtic in 1976, [3] and his PhD in 1992),and at St John's College,Oxford (where he took a diploma in Celtic studies in 1978). [4] In 1986,he worked as a scholar for the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies at the school of Celtic Studies. [5] He is married with six children.[ citation needed ]
Besides numerous research papers on the philology of many Celtic languages,he is the author of Medieval Welsh Literature (1997) [6] and The Origins of the "Four Branches of the Mabinogi" (2009). He is also co-author with Professor Richard Coates of Celtic Voices,English Places (2000).[ citation needed ]
Breeze has written about Mabinogi studies,and The Mabinogion research,especially addressing historical and political parallels. [7] In 1997 he published the controversial "Did a woman write the Four Branches of the Mabinogi?", [8] [9] proposing a woman composer for this leading literary work of British/ Welsh heritage. Breeze's theory rests on the unusual lack of warlike or fighting heroics compared to preceding literature;the high quantity of material on mothering,besides complex,in-depth portraits of Mabinogi women. [10] This much has been supported or tolerated by some scholars,but there has been discussion regarding Breeze's preferred candidate Gwenllian ferch Gruffydd. Since the 1997 article,Breeze has provided further publications on this topic. [7]
In 2015,he published "The Historical Arthur and Sixth-Century Scotland", [11] which locates King Arthur's battles from the 9th-century Historia Brittonum ,placing them all in Scotland and Northern England,with the exception of Mount Badon in the year 493,located at a hillfort east of Braydon Forest,Wiltshire,but having nothing to do with Arthur. Using these identifications,he suggested that Arthur was a Briton from the Kingdom of Strathclyde who fought other Britons,rather than Anglo-Saxons. [12] Other scholars have questioned his findings,which they consider are based on coincidental resemblances between place-names. [13] [14] Nicholas Higham comments that it is difficult to justify identifying Arthur as the leader in northern battles listed in the Historia Brittonum while rejecting the implication in the same work that they were fought against Anglo-Saxons,and that there is no textual justification for separating Badon from the other battles. [15]
Breeze's British Battles 493–937:Mount Badon to Brunanburh was published in 2020 by Anthem Press. As well as reaffirming the Wiltshire site for the 493 battle,it gives new locations for various early conflicts. Amongst them are those of Arthur in 536–7 in southern Scotland and northern England;Degsastan in 603 near Dawyck,on the River Tweed,Scottish Borders;the Battle of Maserfield in 642 at Forden,Powys (and not Oswestry,Shropshire);and Brunanburh in 937 on the River Browney near Lanchester,County Durham (and not Bromborough in Cheshire/Merseyside). This work aims to provide a blueprint for locating a range of battles fought during this early period of British history.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1997 and of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1996. [4]
Ambrosius Aurelianus was a war leader of the Romano-British who won an important battle against the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century, according to Gildas. He also appeared independently in the legends of the Britons, beginning with the 9th-century Historia Brittonum. Eventually, he was transformed by Geoffrey of Monmouth into the uncle of King Arthur, the brother of Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, as a ruler who precedes and predeceases them both. He also appears as a young prophet who meets the tyrant Vortigern; in this guise, he was later transformed into the wizard Merlin.
King Arthur is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.
Æthelstan or Athelstan was King of the Anglo-Saxons from 924 to 927 and King of the English from 927 to his death in 939. He was the son of King Edward the Elder and his first wife, Ecgwynn. Modern historians regard him as the first King of England and one of the "greatest Anglo-Saxon kings". He never married and had no children; he was succeeded by his half-brother, Edmund I.
The Battle of Badon, also known as the Battle of Mons Badonicus, was a battle purportedly fought between Britons and Anglo-Saxons in Post-Roman Britain during the late 5th or early 6th century. It was credited as a major victory for the Britons, stopping the westward encroachment of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms for a period.
Strathclyde, was a Brittonic successor state of the Roman Empire and one of the early medieval kingdoms of the Britons, located in the region the Welsh tribes referred to as Yr Hen Ogledd, which comprised the Brythonic-speaking parts of what is now southern Scotland and northern England. The kingdom developed during Britain's post-Roman period. It is also known as Alt Clut, a Brittonic term for Dumbarton Castle, the medieval capital of the region. It may have had its origins with the Damnonii people of Ptolemy's Geography.
The Mabinogion are the earliest Welsh prose stories, and belong to the Matter of Britain. The stories were compiled in Middle Welsh in the 12th–13th centuries from earlier oral traditions. There are two main source manuscripts, created c. 1350–1410, as well as a few earlier fragments. The title covers a collection of eleven prose stories of widely different types, offering drama, philosophy, romance, tragedy, fantasy and humour, and created by various narrators over time. There is a classic hero quest, "Culhwch and Olwen"; a historic legend in "Lludd and Llefelys", complete with glimpses of a far off age; and other tales portray a very different King Arthur from the later popular versions. The highly sophisticated complexity of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi defies categorisation. The stories are so diverse that it has been argued that they are not even a true collection.
The History of the Britons is a purported history of the indigenous British (Brittonic) people that was written around 828 and survives in numerous recensions that date from after the 11th century. The Historia Brittonum is commonly attributed to Nennius, as some recensions have a preface written in his name. Some experts have dismissed the Nennian preface as a late forgery and argued that the work was actually an anonymous compilation.
The Battle of Brunanburh was fought in 937 between Æthelstan, King of England, and an alliance of Olaf Guthfrithson, King of Dublin; Constantine II, King of Scotland; and Owain, King of Strathclyde. The battle is sometimes cited as the point of origin for English national identity: historians such as Michael Livingston argue that "the men who fought and died on that field forged a political map of the future that remains, arguably making the Battle of Brunanburh one of the most significant battles in the long history not just of England, but of the whole of the British Isles."
The Annales Cambriae is the title given to a complex of Latin chronicles compiled or derived from diverse sources at St David's in Dyfed, Wales. The earliest is a 12th-century presumed copy of a mid-10th-century original; later editions were compiled in the 13th century. Despite the name, the Annales Cambriae record not only events in Wales, but also events in Ireland, Cornwall, England, Scotland and sometimes further afield, though the focus of the events recorded especially in the later two-thirds of the text is Wales.
The Battle of the Winwaed was fought on 15 November 655 between King Penda of Mercia and Oswiu of Bernicia, ending in the Mercians' defeat and Penda's death. According to Bede, the battle marked the effective demise of Anglo-Saxon paganism.
The Matter of Britain is the body of medieval literature and legendary material associated with Great Britain and Brittany and the legendary kings and heroes associated with it, particularly King Arthur. It was one of the three great Western story cycles recalled repeatedly in medieval literature, together with the Matter of France, which concerned the legends of Charlemagne, and the Matter of Rome, which included material derived from or inspired by classical mythology. Its pseudo-chronicle and chivalric romance works, written both in prose and verse, flourished from the 12th to the 16th century, particularly in northern France.
The Battle of Camlann is the legendary final battle of King Arthur, in which Arthur either died or was fatally wounded while fighting either alongside or against Mordred, who also perished. The original legend of Camlann, inspired by a purportedly historical event said to have taken place in the early 6th-century Britain, appears only in vague mentions found in several medieval Welsh texts dating since around the 10th century. The battle's much more detailed depictions have emerged since the 12th century, generally based on that of a catastrophic conflict described in the pseudo-chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae. The further greatly embellished variants originate from the later French chivalric romance tradition, in which it became known as the Battle of Salisbury, and include the 15th-century telling in Le Morte d'Arthur that remains popular today.
The historicity of King Arthur has been debated both by academics and popular writers. While there have been many suggestions that King Arthur was a real historical person, current consensus among academic historians holds him to be a mythological or folkloric figure. However, non-specialists and a few academic historians continue to defend Arthur's historicity.
Cador is a legendary Duke of Cornwall, known chiefly through Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae and previous manuscript sources such as the Life of Carantoc. In Welsh genealogical records, he appears as Cado (Cadwr), the son of Cornish king Geraint. Early sources present him as a relative of King Arthur, though the details of their kinship are usually left unspecified.
Octa was an Anglo-Saxon King of Kent during the 6th century. Sources disagree on his relationship to the other kings in his line; he may have been the son of Hengist or Oisc, and may have been the father of Oisc or Eormenric. The dates of his reign are unclear, but he may have ruled from 512 to 534 or from 516 to 540. Despite his shadowy recorded history Octa made an impact on the Britons, who describe his deeds in several sources.
De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae is a work written in Latin by the 6th-century AD British cleric St Gildas. It is a sermon in three parts condemning the acts of Gildas' contemporaries, both secular and religious, whom he blames for the dire state of affairs in sub-Roman Britain. It is one of the most important sources for the history of Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries, as it is the only significant source for the period written by a near contemporary of the people and events described.
Rachel Bromwich born Rachel Sheldon Amos, was a British scholar. Her focus was on medieval Welsh literature, and she taught Celtic Languages and Literature in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge, from 1945 to 1976. Among her most important contributions to the study of Welsh literature is Trioedd Ynys Prydein, her edition of the Welsh Triads.
Armes Prydein is an early 10th-century Welsh prophetic poem from the Book of Taliesin.
The "Battle of Brunanburh" is an Old English poem. It is preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a historical record of events in Anglo-Saxon England which was kept from the late ninth to the mid-twelfth century. The poem records the Battle of Brunanburh, a battle fought in 937 between an English army and a combined army of Scots, Vikings, and Britons. The battle resulted in an English victory, celebrated by the poem in style and language like that of traditional Old English battle poetry. The poem is notable because of those traditional elements and has been praised for its authentic tone, but it is also remarkable for its fiercely nationalistic tone, which documents the development of a unified England ruled by the House of Wessex.
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