Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry
Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry

Author: Nerys Ann Jones

Publisher: MHRA

Published: 2019-07-12

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1781889082

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For over a thousand years, Arthur has had widespread appeal and influence like no other literary character or historical figure. Yet, despite the efforts of modern scholars, the earliest references to Arthurian characters are still shrouded in uncertainty. They are mostly found in poetic texts scattered throughout the four great compilations of early and medieval Welsh literature produced between 1250 and 1350. Whilst some are thought to predate their manuscript sources by several centuries, many of these poems are notoriously difficult to date. None of them are narrative in nature and very few focus solely on Arthurian material but they are characterised by an allusiveness which would have been appreciated by their intended audiences in the courts of princes and noblemen the length and breadth of Wales. They portray Arthur in a variety of roles: as a great leader of armies, a warrior with extraordinary powers, slayer of magical creatures, rescuer of prisoners from the Otherworld, a poet and the subject of prophecy. They also testify to the possibility of lost tales about him, his father, Uthr, his son, Llachau, his wife, Gwenhwyfar, and one of his companions, Cai, and associate him with a wide array of both legendary and historical figures. Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry, the fourth volume in the MHRA Library of Medieval Welsh Literature series, provides discussion of each of the references to Arthurian characters in early Welsh poetic sources together with an image from the earliest manuscript, a transliteration, a comprehensive edition, a translation (where possible) and a word-list. The nine most significant texts are interpreted in more detail with commentary on metrical, linguistic and stylistic features.

T.H. Jones
T.H. Jones

Author: P. Bernard Jones

Publisher:

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13:

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T.H. Jones (1921-1965) achieved little recognition in Wales or Britain during his lifetime. After publishing his first volume of poetry in 1957, he emigrated to Australia, where his career as a poet and lecturer came to a sadly premature end when he was accidentally drowned. T.H. Jones: Poet of Exile is the first literary biography of an undervalued writer who, the authors suggest, should be thought of as one of the defining poets of mid-twentieth-century Welsh culture, alongside Dylan Thomas and R.S. Thomas. This perceptive study locates Jones in his social and cultural contexts and demonstrates his considerable achievement as a transitional figure in the development of 'Anglo-Welsh' poetry. The authors draw extensively on unpublished sources, such as Jones's extraordinary hand-written 'Black Book' which contains nearly all his poems in chronological order, and on interviews with those closest to Jones. It is a valuable record of a writer important both because of the poetry he wrote and because of what his life has so powerfully to reveal to us about his culture, his period and his place.