Papers by Heather Williams
Heather Williams, éd.International audienc
Etudes Celtiques, 1998
My discussion aims not so much to provide an answer to the thorny question of whether Dafydd ap G... more My discussion aims not so much to provide an answer to the thorny question of whether Dafydd ap Gwilym was a Europhile - this has been attempted by many a critic — as to examine the way in which this question has become the accepted framework within which to study Dafydd’s work. In my introductory section I discuss the ways in which criticism has investigated Dafydd’s possible debt to Continental traditions, with special reference to love poems (which have most frequently been juxtaposed to French models) ; this is followed by a reading of Morfudd fel yr Haul. Then I outline the case for Dafydd’s possible debt to a sub-literary tradition, before concentrating, in my concluding section, on his so-called ‘fabliau’ poems. In my discussion of Trajferth Mewn Tafarn and Cyfeddach, I explore the implications of using imported frameworks for reading Dafydd’s poetry, and question the appropriateness of the classification of certain of his poems as ‘fabliau type’. I suggest that the investiga...
Nineteenth Century French Studies, 2001
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 2019
The place of Celts and Celticity in the French imagination shifts radically during the course of ... more The place of Celts and Celticity in the French imagination shifts radically during the course of the nineteenth century. 1 It is widely accepted that Ernest Renan's essay "La poésie des races celtiques" (Poetry of the Celtic Races) of 1854 is key in this development. Renan is often referred to as the point of departure in any investigation of the dominant images that we have of Brittanyindeed of Celticnesstoday. Along with Matthew Arnold's On Celtic Literature (1867), which is indebted to Renan's text, "La poésie des races celtiques" occupies a key position in the development of Celtic Studies as an academic discipline, and has colored views of Celtic lands and people ever since. The discourse inaugurated by Renan and Arnold has been described as a "Celticism," modeled on Edward Said's "Orientalism" (Mc Cormack 1985, 220; Kiberd 1996, 6), and Arnold's work in embellishing and interpreting Renan has been described as "arguably the most influential piece ever written in the field of Celtic studies" (Chapman 1992, 25). However, it is notable that, despite the mention of "race" in the title of Renan's essay, the discussion of poetry contained within seems to be just as much about place, as a passage near the opening demonstrates: "Le sommet des arbres se dépouille et se tord; la bruyère étend au loin sa teinte uniforme; le granit perce à chaque pas un sol trop maigre pour le revêtir; une mer presque toujours sombre forme à l'horizon un cercle d'éternels gémissements" (The treetops lay themselves bare and writhe; the heather extends its unchanging hue into the distance; at every step granite breaks through a topsoil too thin to clothe it; at the horizon an almost-always somber sea forms a circle of eternal sighs) (1928, 375-376). 2 In what is ostensibly a study of literature, we find a landscape conjured up by a vocabulary of human suffering called on to express a psychological state. 3 The present article explores descriptions of Celtic places that foreground the question of poetry and poeticness, with a focus on travel writing about two Celtic places, Brittany and Wales, by Jules Michelet (1798-1874), the foremost historian of his generation in what was a golden age of French history. Michelet's Breton pages are well known, since the notes in his travel journal for August 1831 were reworked to form the Breton section of his Tableau de la France (1833), before being taken up again in La Mer (1861), to be finally published posthumously as part of his Journal ([1828-1848] 1959). 4 His Welsh pages, on the other hand, have been overlooked, but repay close attention, not least
French Studies Bulletin, 2023
In 2003, I wrote a paper describing the work of Breton regionalists of the nineteenth century as ... more In 2003, I wrote a paper describing the work of Breton regionalists of the nineteenth century as ‘writing to Paris’.1 What I meant was that, while celebrating their native region and its culture, these writers had one eye on Parisian literary tastes and fashions, and that this focus on Paris was an inescapable part of their success. In more abstract terms, this model would be the periphery writing to the centre. Here, I wish to discuss a different model: the periphery writing to another periphery, specifically Breton poets ‘writing to Wales’.
Australian Journal of French Studies, 2023
Through a series of close readings from French-language travelogues on the “Celtic” north, this a... more Through a series of close readings from French-language travelogues on the “Celtic” north, this article illustrates the importance of place to the authentic experience of poetry among the generations that had fallen under the spell of Ossian at the end of the eighteenth century. It traces the motif of the “poetic encounter” through texts by Faujas de Saint-Fond, Necker de Saussure, Charles Nodier, Astolphe de Custine and Alfred Erny. Spanning almost a century, these texts show that in investigating the distant past there is no substitute for going sur place and experiencing the landscape. This article contrasts the various ways in which the “Celtic” land generates poetry: through the medium of ghosts, visions or just through inspiration. An evolution of attitudes towards untranslatability and poetic authenticity is also traced and is contextualized in the history of translation.
Studies in Travel Writing, 2023
This article moves beyond the more usual focus on hierarchical relations between “major” and “min... more This article moves beyond the more usual focus on hierarchical relations between “major” and “minor” cultures to contribute to the emerging debate on the importance of the relations of peripheries with each other, by seeking out the hidden tensions in a rich corpus of travel writing relating to a neo-druidic event in Cardiff in 1899, to which a group of enthusiastic Bretons, mostly from the ranks of the newly formed Union Régionaliste Bretonne [Breton Regionalist Union], were invited. The main texts analysed are by Anatole Le Braz, Charles Le Goffic, François Jaffrennou and Frañsez Vallée. These texts are in French, Breton and Welsh. The analysis reveals tensions within Breton regionalism as well as tensions between two minority cultures.
Studies in Travel Writing, 2014
In 1766, Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was strongly advised by his circle of correspond... more In 1766, Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was strongly advised by his circle of correspondents against his yearning to undertake a journey to Wales. Rousseau believed that Wales “entirely re...
Romance Studies, 2009
This article explores the political implications of different types of translation between French... more This article explores the political implications of different types of translation between French and Breton. The bilingual parallel text publication practice of militant poets active in 1960s and 1970s Brittany is discussed in relation to their perception of Brittany as an 'internal colony', and against the French State's attitude towards regional languages. I argue that the Breton versions of these poems that appear alongside the French function as a synecdoche for racial and cultural oppression and injustice across the world. Translations into Breton from other minority cultures are shown to allow the mapping of political allegiances, and a sense of solidarity. The literature produced in the wake of Gwalarn, a periodical which was characterized by its enthusiasm for translation into Breton, is contrasted with the basically Romantic literature produced by nineteenth-century Breton enthusiasts. For Gwalarnistes translation into Breton from world literature was a key in escaping the cliché-ridden Brittany that had become familiar in Breton literature. The article concludes by considering the implications of translation out of a minority language and into the politically dominant language. Drawing on work in postcolonial translation studies, as well as comments by Welsh writers and critics on the issue of translation, I suggest that translation can be complex and indeed dangerous in the case of a minority culture such as Brittany's, and conclude that there can therefore be no all-encompassing theory of translation.
Nineteenth Century French Studies, 2005
Nottingham French Studies, 2021
This article explores the poetry of François Jaffrennou, who published under the druidic pseudony... more This article explores the poetry of François Jaffrennou, who published under the druidic pseudonym Taldir ab Hernin, as a case study in decolonized multilingualism. Close readings of Taldir's writing in Breton, Welsh and French reveal the pressures of negotiating a hybrid Celtic-French identity, as he affirms his Celticity while maintaining a careful relationship with France. Taldir criticizes the French state in his Welsh texts, whereas in French and Breton his critique is more guarded, subtly codified. The Celtic space which emerges here is full of tensions, as Taldir works both within and against the impulse to reconcile Celtic and French identities. I argue that being provincially Other in France requires a delicate balancing act, a special way of being French. I also contend that to work on the local is to work on the global, looking beyond regionalist and postcolonial approaches to Breton writing in an effort to dismantle the monolingualizing tendencies of French Studies.
This book examines the representation of Wales and ‘Welshness’ in texts by French (including Bret... more This book examines the representation of Wales and ‘Welshness’ in texts by French (including Breton) and German-speaking travellers from 1780 to the present day, focusing on key points in the period of Welsh modernisation from the Industrial Revolution to the post-devolution era. Since the emergence of the travel narrative as a popular source of information and entertainment in the mid-18th century, writing about Wales has often been embedded and hidden in accounts of travel to ‘England’. This book seeks to redefine perceptions of Wales by problematizing the notion of ‘invisibility’ often ascribed to the Welsh context and by broadening perspectives outwards to encompass European perceptions. Works uncovered for the first time include travelogues, private correspondences, travel diaries, articles and blogs which have Wales or Welsh culture as their focus. The ‘travellers’ analysed in this volume ‘travellers’ feature those travelling for the purpose of leisure, scholarship or commerce...
French Studies: A …, 2009
Nottingham French Studies, 2021
Despite their long histories as a culturally valuable commons and sites of biodiversity, the Bret... more Despite their long histories as a culturally valuable commons and sites of biodiversity, the Breton landes were frequently depicted by nineteenth-century authors, travellers and administrators as wild, unproductive wastelands. While the architects of France's ‘interior colonization’ identified such areas as an ugly, infertile expanse to be cleared and put to use, many visual artists were producing a compelling counter-narrative, representing the landes and zones humides as places of beauty and reverie. This article examines the work of artists such as François Blin, Camille Bernier, Alexandre Ségé and Henri Rivière from an ecocritical perspective, arguing that their work contributed to a discourse of preservation by encouraging new ways of seeing the land, not for its extractive utility but as a space of unexpected splendour and enchantment. Far from a regressive form of nostalgia, these images encourage a unique ‘dwelling perspective’ which uses aesthetic beauty to reveal the area's ecological potential and to articulate a call for responsible environmental stewardship.
Bien qu'elles avaient servi depuis longtemps de biens communs propices à la biodiversité tout en gardant une valeur culturelle particulière, les landes bretonnes étaient souvent décrites par les écrivains, les voyageurs et les administrateurs du dix-neuvième siècle comme des terrains vagues, sauvages et improductifs. Alors que les architectes français de la « colonisation intérieure » voyaient dans ces régions une étendue laide et infertile à défricher et à mettre à profit, bon nombre d'artistes visuels produisaient un contre-discours convaincant en représentant les landes et zones humides comme de beaux sites prêtant à la rêverie. Dans cette étude écocritique d'artistes tels que François Blin, Camille Bernier, Alexandre Ségé et Henri Rivière, je propose que leurs œuvres contribuent à un discours de préservation en prônant de nouvelles modes de voir la terre, non pas pour son utilité extractive mais comme un endroit d'une splendeur inattendue propice à l'enchantement. Loin de proposer une nostalgie régressive, ces tableaux articulent une « perspective d'appartenance intime » qui utilise la beauté esthétique afin de révéler le potentiel écologique de la région et d'appeler à une gérance responsable de l'environnement.
Nottingham French Studies, 2021
This article explores the poetry of François Jaffrennou, who published under the druidic pseudony... more This article explores the poetry of François Jaffrennou, who published under the druidic pseudonym Taldir ab Hernin, as a case study in decolonized multilingualism. Close readings of Taldir’s writing in Breton, Welsh and French reveal the pressures of negotiating a hybrid Celtic-French identity, as he affirms his Celticity while maintaining a careful relationship with France. Taldir criticizes the French state in his Welsh texts, whereas in French and Breton his critique is more guarded, subtly codified. The Celtic space which emerges here is full of tensions, as Taldir works both within and against the impulse to reconcile Celtic and French identities. I argue that being provincially Other in France requires a delicate balancing act, a special way of being French. I also contend that to work on the local is to work on the global, looking beyond regionalist and postcolonial approaches to Breton writing in an effort to dismantle the monolingualizing tendencies of French Studies.
Nineteenth-Century Contexts: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2019
This paper examines the radical shift in the place of Celts in the French imagination during the ... more This paper examines the radical shift in the place of Celts in the French imagination during the course of the nineteenth century, by focusing on two versions of a passage describing Wales by Michelet: the first written in his travel journal (1834), the second published by his widow (1893). Wales, by virtue of being a Celtic place, allows Michelet to deepen his understanding or France. Whereas juxtaposition of the two versions of his text reveals something of the French state’s attitude towards the ambiguously domestic and exotic Celtic ‘other’.
VTU Review: Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences , 2018
This article asks what uses two minoritized cultures, Brittany and Wales, make of each other. Tra... more This article asks what uses two minoritized cultures, Brittany and Wales, make of each other. Travel writing provides a privileged point of access to the issue, and the motif of mutual understanding between the two cultures is a key way in. Analysis of this motif in Welsh-language travel accounts to Brittany by O.M. Edwards, Tro yn Llydaw [A Tour in Brittany] (1888), Ambrose Bebb, Llydaw [Brittany] (1929), Pererindodau [Pilgrimages] (1941), and Dyfnallt, O Ben Tir Llydaw [From the Headland of Brittany] (1934) sheds light on the issues of cultural translation, periphery-periphery relations and Wales's Europeanness. The motif of mutual understanding investigated in this article ranges from claims that the two Celtic languages-Breton and Welsh-are one and the same, to affirmations of kinship, and is found across texts in different languages from Romanticism onwards. The incidence of such claims in French-language travel writing about Wales rises, following the French Revolution, and its positive valorization of Gauls, and therefore Celts, over France's Frankish ancestors. So whereas the novelist and educationalist Mme de Genlis (1746-1830), whose visit to Wales in 1792 is described in her memoirs of 1825, has recourse to Scottish and Irish points of reference (in this case Walter Scott, Ossian and Irish harps) in order to convey the Celtic otherness of Wales, more and more French writers during the course of the nineteenth century draw explicit comparisons between Brittany and Wales. 1 Historian Jules Michelet (1798-1874), for instance, who travelled through north Wales en route for Ireland in summer 1834, is transported right back to Brittany by his experience of the Welsh landscape. 2 In the case of Breton-born travellers to Wales, such as the poet and song collector Hersart de la Villemarqué (1815-1895) who visited an Eisteddfod in Abergavenny in 1838, along with a delegation of fellow-Bretons, investigating and subsequently exploiting this Celtic kinship, was the main motivation for travel. At the end of the nineteenth century, the heyday of pan-Celticism, another delegation of Bretons attended an Eisteddfod held in Cardiff, and the travel writing that resulted from their visit shows a new generation of Bretons putting the idea of Celtic connections to the test sur place. 3 The motif appears in various guises, ranging from the linguistic myth of mutual comprehension to assertions that the Welsh and Bretons are cousins or siblings separated either by a geographical feature such as the sea, or indeed by time, as when one Celtic branch is referred to as the ancestors of the other. The precise form that the motif takes gives an indication of the writer's agenda, from those who exaggerate the connection by manipulating or even fabricating evidence (like La Villemarqué), to those who strive to demystify and to downplay it (like Ambrose Bebb).
Ideas have never respected national boundaries. Within literary studies the concept of a national... more Ideas have never respected national boundaries. Within literary studies the concept of a national literature has been transcended, with our focus now on ‘contact zones’ and ‘translation zones’, thanks to the rise of postcolonial studies and translation studies. As a result, Modern Languages is currently transforming itself into a ‘transnational’, ‘translingual’ and ‘postmonolingual’ discipline. Welsh writing exists in more than one language, and pioneering work by M. Wynn Thomas and others has made it clear that the literatures of Wales demand to be studied together, while Daniel Williams’s work exemplifies the multicultural and comparative approach that he has long advocated. But English is not the only ‘other’ language of relevance to Wales Studies; for instance the ‘European travellers to Wales’ project has brought to light a new corpus of writing about Wales in various European languages, that informs us about Wales’s place in the European imagination and about cultural exchanges between Wales and the continent. My paper will first outline some findings from this project, before focusing on cultural exchange between Wales and Brittany as an example of Wales’s micro-cosmopolitanism. It will argue that a multilingual, transnational approach is required to establish the extent to which the Wales and Brittany movements have always been internationalist in outlook. Travel writing by Welsh writers O.M. Edwards, Tro yn Llydaw (1888), Ambrose Bebb, Llydaw (1929), Pererindodau (1941), and Dyfnallt, O Ben Tir Llydaw (1934) will be discussed and used as specific examples through which to look at the issues of cultural translation, periphery-periphery relations, and Wales’s Europeanness. My discussion aims to suggest why our field of study needs to be Welsh writing in any language.
Uploads
Papers by Heather Williams
Bien qu'elles avaient servi depuis longtemps de biens communs propices à la biodiversité tout en gardant une valeur culturelle particulière, les landes bretonnes étaient souvent décrites par les écrivains, les voyageurs et les administrateurs du dix-neuvième siècle comme des terrains vagues, sauvages et improductifs. Alors que les architectes français de la « colonisation intérieure » voyaient dans ces régions une étendue laide et infertile à défricher et à mettre à profit, bon nombre d'artistes visuels produisaient un contre-discours convaincant en représentant les landes et zones humides comme de beaux sites prêtant à la rêverie. Dans cette étude écocritique d'artistes tels que François Blin, Camille Bernier, Alexandre Ségé et Henri Rivière, je propose que leurs œuvres contribuent à un discours de préservation en prônant de nouvelles modes de voir la terre, non pas pour son utilité extractive mais comme un endroit d'une splendeur inattendue propice à l'enchantement. Loin de proposer une nostalgie régressive, ces tableaux articulent une « perspective d'appartenance intime » qui utilise la beauté esthétique afin de révéler le potentiel écologique de la région et d'appeler à une gérance responsable de l'environnement.
Bien qu'elles avaient servi depuis longtemps de biens communs propices à la biodiversité tout en gardant une valeur culturelle particulière, les landes bretonnes étaient souvent décrites par les écrivains, les voyageurs et les administrateurs du dix-neuvième siècle comme des terrains vagues, sauvages et improductifs. Alors que les architectes français de la « colonisation intérieure » voyaient dans ces régions une étendue laide et infertile à défricher et à mettre à profit, bon nombre d'artistes visuels produisaient un contre-discours convaincant en représentant les landes et zones humides comme de beaux sites prêtant à la rêverie. Dans cette étude écocritique d'artistes tels que François Blin, Camille Bernier, Alexandre Ségé et Henri Rivière, je propose que leurs œuvres contribuent à un discours de préservation en prônant de nouvelles modes de voir la terre, non pas pour son utilité extractive mais comme un endroit d'une splendeur inattendue propice à l'enchantement. Loin de proposer une nostalgie régressive, ces tableaux articulent une « perspective d'appartenance intime » qui utilise la beauté esthétique afin de révéler le potentiel écologique de la région et d'appeler à une gérance responsable de l'environnement.