A Guide to Welsh Literature c.1280 - c.1550

Edited by A.O.H. Jarman and G. Rees Hughes
Revised by Dafydd Johnston

pp x375 Paperback Demy 8vo 1997 0-7083-1439-2

This is the second of a series of volumes outlining the history and development of Welsh literature from its beginnings in the sixth century to the present day.

First published in 1979, under the editorship of Professor A. O. H. Jarman and Dr Gwilym Rees Hughes, this collection of essays by leading scholars still offers the most thorough and authoritative survey of the Welsh literature of the later Middle Ages. The importance of understanding the historical background of medieval Welsh literature is stressed in the opening chapter, and the final chapter emphasizes the links between later medieval Welsh prose and the broad intellectual movements of the age. The rest of the volume is concerned with poetry and the practice of the bardic craft. This was the period of the predominance of the cywydd metre, and separate chapters are devoted to seven of its most notable practitioners. Outstanding among them is Dafydd ap Gwilym, Wales's most famous poet, whose work is treated at some length. Other poets are studied in groups and there is a separate chapter on the Welsh metrical system. The chapters on the later Gogynfeirdd and prophetic poetry illustrate the continuance and development during the period of the cywydd of certain features of the literary tradition already discussed in Volume 1.

Editor: This revised edition was prepared by Professor Dafydd Johnston, Professor of Welsh. University of Wales, Swansea.

Contents and Contributors:

• A. D. Carr, The Historical Background, 1282-1550;
• D. Myrddin Lloyd, The Later Gogynfeirdd;
• Ceri W. Lewis, Einion Offeiriad and the Bardic Grammar;
• Ceri W. Lewis, The Content of Poetry and the Crisis in the Bardic Tradition;
• Rachel Bromwich, Dafydd ap Gwilym;
• Rachel Bromwich, The Earlier Cywyddwyr: Poets Contemporary with Dafydd ap Gwilym;
• G. E. Ruddock, Siôn Cent;
• D. Myrddin Lloyd, Dafydd Nanmor;
• Eurys Rowlands, Cynghanedd, Metre, Prosody;
• J. E. Caerwyn Williams, Guto’r Glyn;
• E. D. Jones, Lewis Glyn Cothi;
• J. E. Caerwyn Williams, Gutun Owain;
• R. Wallis Evans, Prophetic Poetry;
• Eurys Rowlands, The Continuing Tradition;
• Eurys Rowlands, Tudur Aled;
• Morfydd E. Owen, The Prose of the Cywydd Period.