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Welsh-language literature (Welsh: Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg) has been produced continuously since the emergence of Welsh from Brythonic as a distinct language in around the 5th century AD. [1] The earliest Welsh literature was poetry, which was extremely intricate in form from its earliest known examples, a tradition sustained today. Poetry was followed by the first British prose literature in the 11th century (such as that contained in the Mabinogion). Welsh-language literature has repeatedly played a major part in the self-assertion of Wales and its people. It continues to be held in the highest regard, as evidenced by the size and enthusiasm of the audiences attending the annual National Eisteddfod of Wales (Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru), probably the largest amateur arts festival in Europe,[2] which crowns the literary prize winners in a dignified ceremony.
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The mediaeval period had three chronological stages of poetry: The earliest poets (Cynfeirdd),[3] Poets of the Princes, and the Poets of Nobility.[4] Additionally, storytelling practices were continuous throughout the middle ages in Wales.
The earliest extant poets wrote praise poems for rulers and lords of Welsh dynasties from Strathclyde to Cornwall.[5]
The Cynfeirdd is a modern term which is used to refer to the earliest poets that wrote in Welsh and Welsh poetry dating before 1100. These poets (beirdd) existed in the modern geographical definition of Wales in addition to the Old North (Yr Hen Ogledd) and the language of the time was a common root called Brittonic, a precursor to the Welsh language.[6] The bards Taliesin and Aneirin are among nine poets mentioned in the medieval book Historia Brittonum. There is also anonymous poetry that survives from the period. The dominant themes or "modes" of the period are heroic elegies that celebrate and commemorate heroes of battle and military success.[7]
The beirdd (bards) were also mentioned in Hywel Dda's Welsh law.[8]
In the 11th century, Norman influence and challenge disrupted Welsh cultures, and the language developed into Middle Welsh. [9]
The next period is the Poets of the Princes, which is the period from c. 1100 until the conquest of Wales by King Edward of England in 1282–83.[4]
The poets of the princess is heavily associated with the princes of Gwynedd including Gruffudd ap Cynan, Llywelyn the Great and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. Tradition states that Gruffydd ap Cynan helped to develop the tradition and regulation of poetry and music in Wales. The Arglwydd Rhys ap Gruffydd (Lord Rhys) is also associated with this development in Cardigan, Ceredigion and one chronicler describes how an assembly where musicians and bards competed for chairs.[10]
The society of the court poets came to a sudden end in 1282 following the killing of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last of native Welsh princes. Llywelyn was slain in an ambush and his head was placed on the Tower of London "with an iron pole through it". The poets of the princes describe the grief surrounding his death, for example Gruffydd ap yr Ynad Goch (translated from Welsh), "Cold is the heart under my breast for terror and sadness for the King," and he goes on: "Woe is me for my lord, a hero without reproach,/ Woe is me for the adversity, that he should have stumbled .... Mine it is to praise him, without break, with- out end,/ Mine it is to think of him for a long time,/ Mine it is to live out my lifetime sad because of him,/For mine is sorrow, mine is weeping."[11]
The next stage was the Poets of the Nobility which includes poetry of the period between the Edwardian Conquest of 1282/3 and the death of Tudur Aled in 1526.[4]
The highest levels of the poetic art in Welsh are intensely intricate. The bards were extremely organised and professional, with a structured training which lasted many years. As a class, they proved very adaptable: when the princely dynasties ended in 1282, and Welsh principalities were annexed by England, they found necessary patronage with the next social level, the uchelwyr, or landed gentry. The shift led creatively to innovation – the development of the cywydd metre, with looser forms of structure.[12]
The professionalism of the poetic tradition was sustained by a guild of poets, or Order of bards, with its own "rule book". This "rule book" emphasised their professional status, and the making of poetry as a craft. An apprenticeship of nine years was required for a poet to be fully qualified. The rules also set out the payment a poet could expect for his work – these payments varied according to how long a poet had been in training and also the demand for poetry at particular times during the year.[13]
There were also cyfarwyddiaid (sing. cyfarwydd), storytellers. These were also professional, paid artists; but, unlike the poets, they seem to have remained anonymous. It is not clear whether these storytellers were a wholly separate, popular level class, or whether some of the bards practised storytelling as part of their repertoire. Little of this prose work has survived, but even so it provides the earliest British prose literature. These native Welsh tales and some hybrids with French/Norman influence form a collection known in modern times as the Mabinogion.[14] The name became established in the 19th century but is based on a linguistic mistake (a more correct term is Mabinogi).[15]
Welsh literature in the Middle Ages also included a substantial body of laws, genealogies, religious and mythical texts, histories, medical and gnomic lore, and practical works, in addition to literature translated from other languages such as Latin, Breton or French. Besides prose and longer poetry, the literature includes the distinctive Trioedd, Welsh Triads, short lists usually of three items, apparently used as aids to memory.[16]
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The 16th and 17th centuries in Wales, as in the rest of Europe, were a period of great change. Politically, socially, and economically the foundations of modern Wales were laid at this time. In the Laws in Wales Acts 1535-1542 Wales was annexed and integrated fully into the English kingdom, losing any vestiges of political or legal independence.[17]
From the middle of the 16th century onwards, a decline is seen in the praise tradition of the poets of the nobility, the cywyddwyr. It became more and more difficult for poets to make their living — primarily for social reasons beyond their control.
The Dissolution of the Monasteries, which had become important sources of patronage for the poets, and the anglicisation of the nobility during the Tudor period, exemplified by the Laws in Wales Acts, meant that there were fewer and fewer patrons willing or able to support the poets. But there were also internal reasons for the decline: the conservatism of the Guild of poets, or Order of bards, made it very difficult for it to adapt to the new world of Renaissance learning and the growth of printing.
However, the Welsh poetic tradition with its traditional metres and cynghanedd (patterns of alliteration) did not disappear, but came into the hands of ordinary poets who kept it alive through the centuries.[18] Cynghanedd and traditional metres are still used today by many Welsh-language poets.[19]
By 1571 Jesus College, Oxford, was founded to provide an academic education for Welshmen, and the commitment of certain individuals, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, ensured that the Welsh language would be part of the new Renaissance in learning.[20]
In 1546 the first book to be printed in Welsh was published, Yny lhyvyr hwnn ("In this book") by Sir John Price of Brecon. John Price (c. 1502–55) was an aristocrat and an important civil servant. He served as Secretary of the Council of Wales and the Marches and he was also one of the officers responsible for administration of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the area. He was also a scholar who embraced the latest ideas relating to religion and learning: reform and humanism. It is also known that he was a collector of manuscripts on various subjects, including the history and literature of Wales.[21]
Shortly afterwards the works of William Salesbury began to appear. Salesbury was an ardent Protestant and coupled his learning with the new religious ideas from the Continent; he translated the New Testament into Welsh and compiled an English-Welsh dictionary, among other works. On the other hand, Gruffudd Robert was an ardent Catholic, but in the same spirit of learning published an important Welsh grammar while in enforced exile in Milan in 1567. A huge step forward for both the Welsh language and its literature was the publication, in 1588, of a full-scale translation of the Bible by William Morgan.
Most of the works published in the Welsh language for at least the next century were religious in nature. Morgan Llwyd, a Puritan, wrote in both English and Welsh, recounting his spiritual experiences. Other notable writers of the period included Vavasor Powell.
During this period, poetry also began to take a religious turn. William Pugh was a Royalist and a Catholic. By now, women as well as men were writing, but little of their work can be identified. Katherine Philips of Cardigan Priory, although English by birth, lived in Wales for most of her life, and was at the centre of a literary coterie comprising both sexes.
The seeds of Anglo-Welsh literature can also be detected, particularly in the work of Henry Vaughan and his contemporary, George Herbert, both Royalists.[22]
In the 18th century the trend towards religious literature continued and grew even stronger as Nonconformism began to take hold in Wales. The Welsh Methodist revival, initially led by Howell Harris and Daniel Rowland, produced not only sermons and religious tracts, but also hymns and poetry by William Williams Pantycelyn, Ann Griffiths and others.[23] The Morris brothers of Anglesey were leading figures in the establishment of the London Welsh societies, and their correspondence is an important record of the time. The activities of the London Welshmen helped ensure that Wales retained some kind of profile within Britain as a whole.[24]
The activities of a number of individuals, including Thomas Jones of Corwen and the Glamorgan stonemason and man of letters, Iolo Morganwg, led to the institution of the National Eisteddfod of Wales and the invention of many of the traditions which surround it today. Although Iolo is sometimes called a charlatan because so many of his "discoveries" were based on pure myth, he was also an inveterate collector of old manuscripts, and thereby performed a service without which Welsh literature would have been the poorer.[25] Some of the Welsh gentry continued to patronise bards, but this practice was gradually dying out.[26]
Due mainly to the Industrial Revolution the 19th century was an enormously transformative century in Wales, with the population growing fivefold due to both natural growth and significant immigration, particularly into the South Wales Valleys. The majority of the newcomers were English or Irish, and though some learned the Welsh language in order to integrate into their new communities, where immigration was very significant English displaced Welsh as the community language such that, whilst virtually the entire population was Welsh speaking at the start of the century (with the majority monoglot), by the end of the century only about half the population could speak Welsh.
The increasing population and growing literacy however led to a huge increase in demand for literature in Welsh the form of books, periodicals, newspapers, poetry, ballads and sermons, and many times more was published in Welsh over the course of the 19th century than had been published before 1800. However, twentieth century critics such as Thomas Parry were of the view that the vast majority of the literature in Welsh was of extremely poor in quality[27]
Welsh poetry of the nineteenth century can be broadly categorised into three overlapping traditions. The first of these was the continuing native bardic tradition as codified by Goronwy Owen and Iolo Morgannwg in the previous century, focused around the flourishing local (and, by the middle of the century, National) Eisteddfodau and their competitive demands. The whose significant figures of this tradition in the first part of the century included John Blackwell (Alun), Dafydd Ddu Eryri and Ebenezer Thomas (Eben Fardd): poets used bardic names to disguise their identity in competitions, and often continued to use them when they became well known. These poets favoured the strict metres and traditional forms such as the awdl. Second was the continuing tradition of the Christian hymn, indebted to William Williams Pantycelyn and with its most prominent figure being Ann Griffiths. Despite dying at 29 in 1805 and having a complete poetic legacy of fewer than thirty individual poems gained an almost cult-like popularity over the course of the century.[28] These two traditions had been well established at the end of the eighteenth century; but the third tradition was that of the popular Romantic lyrics, ballads and songs. It can be seen emerging in the work of Alun and Talhaiarn and drew influences from folk song as well as the English Romantic poets. This tradition is exemplified by figures such as Ieuan Glan Geirionydd, Mynyddog and Islwyn.[29] The most popular of this school however, and the most popular Welsh poet of the nineteenth century, was undoubtedly John Ceiriog Hughes, widely known simply as Ceiriog. His simple, effecting lyrics, often describing rural and romantic scenes were enormously popular, and poems such as Ar Hyd y Nos became popular as songs, in which form they remain familiar to many today.
These three traditions were not exclusive, and particularly in the earlier part of the century many poets such as Eben Fardd wrote poetry within more than one tradition. By the end of the century however the divide between the Eisteddfod bards and popular poets had grown significant. It is noteworthy, for example, that popular poets such as Islwyn and Ceiriog experienced little success at the Eisteddfod, whilst many of those who did, such as Job, Pedrog and Tudno are almost completely forgotten today. By the end of the century a new generation of poets such as John Morris-Jones and T. Gwynn Jones sought to both simplify and improve the quality of Eisteddfod poetry, which they perceived had become formulaic and stilted.[30]
Despite the patriarchal nature of Welsh society in the period, some women such as Ann Griffiths and Cranogwen were able to make their mark as poets.
The vitality of the Welsh language press meant the century was a golden are for Welsh prose in Welsh in terms of quantity, if not necessarily quality. The first original novel in Welsh had begun appearing in periodicals by the 1820s, though translations of works such as Robinson Crusoe had appeared earlier. By the middle of the 19th century novels were appearing frequently in periodicals and occasionally as volumes and by the end of the century hundreds had been published including love stories, historical novels and adventure novels.
Noteworthy novelists of the middle part of the century century included Elis o'r Nant, Gwilym Hiraethog, Llew Llwyfo and Beriah Gwynfe Evans, but the first novelist in the Welsh language to achieve genuine lasting popularity was Daniel Owen (1836-1895), author of Rhys Lewis (1885) and Enoc Huws (1891), among others.[31] Owen's achievement went some way towards legitimising the Welsh-language novel and by the end of the century others such as William Llewelyn Williams, T. Gwynn Jones and Winnie Parry had achieved success in the genre.
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Whilst the nineteenth century had seen an explosion in the quantity of literature composed in Welsh, the first decade of the twentieth century saw the first generation of a more professional, artistically sophisticated kind of poet. Though better known at the time as a novelist, T. Gwynn Jones won the Chair at the 1902 Eisteddfod with Ymadawiad Arthur, a poem which reconciled the European romantic traditions of King Arthur with the Mabinogion. It was one of the shortest awdlau to win the Chair at the time and reinvigorated the Eisteddfod tradition; Gwynn himself was one of the leading figures in a late flowering of Romanticism in Welsh poetry alongside figures such as R. Williams Parry, W. J. Gruffydd, John Morris Jones and R. Silyn Roberts (whose Trystan ac Esyllt won the Eisteddfod Crown in the same year as Gwynn won the chair); they were referred to contemporaneously in some sources as examples of "y Bardd Newydd" ("the new poet/bard"). Many of these were university-educated and Gwynn and Morris-Jones in particular made major contributions in academia.
This period would prove to be short-lived, however, and the First World War - as well as literally killing one of the movement's brightest young talents in Hedd Wyn, who was killed in the Battle of Passchendaele a few short weeks before being awarded the Chair at the 1917 Eisteddfod - also seemed to close the book on romanticism, with many of the movement's leading lights favouring a more modernist idiom after the war.
Though the first poets of this new modernist period, such as T. H. Parry-Williams, continued to make use of native Welsh forms and cynghanedd, they also effectively employed European forms in particular the sonnet, of which Parry-Williams was a master. Modernism was reflected in both the subject matter of Welsh poetry as well as its form: Parry-Williams' sonnet Dychwelyd ("Return") is a bleak expression of nihilism for example, and E. Prosser Rhys courted controversy for his frank (for the time) depictions of sexuality, including homosexuality, in poems such as Atgof ("Memory"), which won the crown at the 1924 Eisteddfod. Poets such as Cynan described their own experiences of the war much as English language poets had done.
Modernism caught on more slowly in prose, and the prominent early twentieth century novelists (most notably T. Gwynn Jones and Gwyneth Vaughan in many respects continued the tradition as codified by Daniel Owen. More radical examples in the genre had begun to emerge however by the 1930s such as Saunders Lewis' Monica (1930), a novel about a woman obsessed with sexuality and which caused something of a scandal on its publication [32]and Plasau'r Brenin (1934) by Gwenallt, a semi-autobiographical novel describing the author's experiences in a prison as a conscientious objector during the war.
The most popular novelists of the first half of the century continued the realist tradition, however, such as E. Tegla Davies Kate Roberts and Elena Puw Morgan. The most successful novelist of this period was perhaps T. Rowland Hughes, who was notable for describing the culture of the slate quarrying regions of North-West Wales. His novels, such as William Jones (1942) and Chwalfa (1946) were the first to match Daniel Owen for popularity, though his novels belong stylistically to an earlier period.
As the twentieth century wore on, Welsh literature began to reflect the way the language was increasingly becoming a political symbol, with many of the leading literary figures also involved in Welsh nationalism, perhaps most notably Saunders Lewis and the writer/publisher Kate Roberts. Lewis, who had been brought up in Liverpool, was a leader of Plaid Cymru jailed for his part in protests; though a poet and a novelist as well as a significant critic and academic, his main literary legacy was in thr field of drama. Novelist and short story writer Kate Roberts had been active since the 1930s, but in the late 40s and 50s produced a remarkable stream of novels and stories, often depicting the lives of working-class women and with feminist themes, that earned her the moniker "Brenhines ein llên" ("The Queen of our Literature")[33] and established her as perhaps, to this day, the single best known prose writer in Welsh.
The 1940s also saw the creation of a notable writing group in the Rhondda, called the "Cadwgan Circle". Writing almost entirely in the Welsh language, the movement, formed by J. Gwyn Griffiths and his wife Käthe Bosse-Griffiths, included the Welsh writers Pennar Davies, Rhydwen Williams, James Kitchener Davies and Gareth Alban Davies.
After a relatively quiet period between 1950–1970, large numbers of Welsh-language novels began appearing from the 1980s onwards, with such authors as Aled Islwyn and Angharad Tomos. In the 1990s there was a distinct trend towards postmodernism in Welsh prose writing, especially evident in the work of such authors as Wiliam Owen Roberts and Mihangel Morgan.
Meanwhile, in the 1970s Welsh poetry took on a new lease of life as poets sought to regain mastery over the traditional verse forms, partly to make a political point. Alan Llwyd and Dic Jones were leaders in the field. Female poets such as Menna Elfyn gradually began to make their voices heard, overcoming the obstacle of the male-dominated bardic circle and its conventions.
The scholar Sir Ifor Williams also pioneered scientific study of the earliest Welsh written literature, as well as the Welsh language itself, recovering the works of poets like Taliesin and Aneirin from the uncritical fancies of various antiquarians, such as the Reverend Edward Davies who believed the theme of Aneirin's Gododdin was the massacre of the Britons at Stonehenge in 472.
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