Dafydd ap Gwilym is regarded as one of the leading Welsh poets and amongst the great poets of Europe in the Middle Ages. Dafydd’s poetry also offers a unique window into the transcultural movement of cultural practices and preservation of culture in the face of occupation. Dafydd also helps answer questions that linger over the spread of culture. Even though it has been given less attention, cultural development in Wales differed slightly than in other parts of Europe during the same time.
Afallach is a man's name found in several medieval Welsh genealogies, where he is made the son of Beli Mawr. According to a medieval Welsh triad, Afallach was the father of the goddess Modron. The Welsh redactions of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, Brut y Brenhinedd, associate him with Ynys Afallach, which is substituted as the Welsh name for Geoffrey's Insula Avalonsis, but this is fanciful medieval etymology and it is more likely his name derives from the Welsh word afall "apple tree" ; from which, granted, the name of Avalon is also often thought to derive, so that the meaning of "Afallach" is associated but not necessarily directly. In the tale of Urien and Modron he is referred to by his daughter as the King of Annwn, therefore he may originally been cognate with Arawn or Gwyn or perhaps all three were once regional variants of the same Deity.
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.
Welsh writing in English, is a term used to describe works written in the English language by Welsh writers.
The Celtic Revival is a variety of movements and trends in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries that see a renewed interest in aspects of Celtic culture. Artists and writers drew on the traditions of Gaelic literature, Welsh-language literature, and Celtic art—what historians call insular art. Although the revival was complex and multifaceted, occurring across many fields and in various countries in Northwest Europe, its best known incarnation is probably the Irish Literary Revival. Irish writers including William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, "Æ" Russell, Edward Martyn, Alice Milligan and Edward Plunkett stimulated a new appreciation of traditional Irish literature and Irish poetry in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Historical fantasy is a category of fantasy and genre of historical fiction that incorporates fantastic elements into a more "realistic" narrative. There is much crossover with other subgenres of fantasy; those classed as Arthurian, Celtic, or Dark Ages could just as easily be placed in historical fantasy. Stories fitting this classification generally take place prior to the 20th century.
Edward Williams, better known by his bardic name Iolo Morganwg, was a Welsh antiquarian, poet and collector. He was seen as an expert collector of Medieval Welsh literature, but it emerged after his death that he had forged several manuscripts, notably some of the Third Series of Welsh Triads. Even so, he had a lasting impact on Welsh culture, notably in founding the secret society known as the Gorsedd, through which Iolo Morganwg successfully co-opted the 18th-century Eisteddfod revival. The philosophy he spread in his forgeries has had an enormous impact upon neo-Druidism. His bardic name is Welsh for "Iolo of Glamorgan".
William John Gruffydd was a Welsh scholar, poet, writer and editor, and the last Member of Parliament to represent the University of Wales seat.
Medievalism is a system of belief and practice inspired by the Middle Ages of Europe, or by devotion to elements of that period, which have been expressed in areas such as architecture, literature, music, art, philosophy, scholarship, and various vehicles of popular culture. Since the 17th century, a variety of movements have used the medieval period as a model or inspiration for creative activity, including Romanticism, the Gothic revival, the Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts movements, and neo-medievalism . Historians have attempted to conceptualize the history of non-European countries in terms of medievalisms, but the approach has been controversial among scholars of Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Christopher Meredith FLSW is a poet, novelist, short story writer, and translator from Tredegar, Wales.
The Penn State University Press, also known as The Pennsylvania State University Press, is a non-profit publisher of scholarly books and journals. Established in 1956, it is the independent publishing branch of the Pennsylvania State University and is a division of the Penn State University Library system.
Stephen Thomas Knight MA (Oxon.), PhD (Sydney), FAHA, FEA was, until September 2011, a distinguished research professor in English literature at Cardiff University; and is a professorial fellow of Literature at the University of Melbourne. His areas of expertise include medieval English and European literature, Robin Hood, Merlin, cultural studies, crime fiction, and Australian matters. He has authored over thirty books, and is well known in the public sphere for his contribution to a range of fields. His most recent books have been The Politics of Myth (2015), Towards Sherlock Holmes: A Thematic History of Crime Fiction in the 19th Century World (2017), Australian Crime Fiction: A 200-year History (2018), The Fiction of G.W.M. Reynolds: The Man Who Outsold Dickens (2019) and The University is Closed for Open Day: Themes and Scenes from 21st Century Australia (2019).
The genealogies from Jesus College MS 20 are a medieval Welsh collection of genealogies preserved in a single manuscript, Oxford University, Bodleian Library, Jesus College, MS 20, folios 33r–41r. It presents the lineages of a number of medieval Welsh rulers, particularly those of south Wales. The manuscript was compiled in the late 14th century, but many genealogies are thought to be considerably older. The latest pedigrees to have been included in the tract are those of Llywelyn ab Iorwerth and Rhys Gryg. It shares some material with the earlier Harleian genealogies.
The Red Dragon, The National Magazine of Wales, was a monthly English-language literary magazine published in Cardiff, Wales, from February 1882 until June 1887. It was edited by Charles Wilkins until July 1885 when James Harris took over.
Anthony Oliver Davies is a British systematic theologian. He has made contributions to the study of medieval mysticism, early medieval Welsh and Irish spirituality, and contemporary Systematic Theology. He presently works in the fields of neuroscience, theology and social transformation. Davies is the originator together with Paul Janz and Clemens Sedmak of ‘Transformation Theology’. Since 2004 he has held the chair of Christian Doctrine at King's College London, as a Roman Catholic layman. He is founding director of the Centre for Social Transformation at King's College London, which specializes in the development of 'global' or 'ecumenical' understandings of the self in the light of comparative philosophy, traditional philosophies and new advances in the neurology of social cognition.
Emma L. E. Rees is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Chester.
Sarah Helen Prescott FLSW is Professor of English Literature at Aberystwyth University and a non-fiction writer, specializing in the history of Welsh literature in English. She is also the director of the university's Institute of Literature, Languages and Creative Arts (ILLCA).
In addition to English, literature has been written in a wide variety of other languages in Britain, that is the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. This includes literature in Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Latin, Cornish, Anglo-Norman, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Manx, and Irish. Literature in Anglo-Saxon is treated as English literature and literature in Scots as Scottish literature.
David Lyle Jeffrey is a Canadian-American scholar of literature and religion, currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Baylor Institute for Studies in Religion. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (1996-). In 2003 he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Conference of Christianity and Literature.
Rhiannon Ifans, FLSW is a Welsh academic specialising in English, Medieval and Welsh literature. She was an Anthony Dyson Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, in University of Wales Trinity St. David. She twice won a Tir na-n-Og prize for her work and won the literary medal competition at the Welsh Eisteddfod, for her 2019 debut novel, Ingrid, which was chosen for the Welsh Literature Exchange Bookshelf. In 2020, Ifans was elected as a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.
