Llenyddiaeth Cymru

Liturgy-like displayed in this cywydd-genre -Method of ‚dyfalu', i.e. increased use of metaphors cf. metaphysical poets (17th c.) and their use of conceits -an extended metaphor with a complex logic, juxtaposing, usurping and manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways -A conceit is a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness

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 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.

Traethawd MA. 2016. Prifysgol Cymru Y Drindod Dewi Sant.

Crynodeb:

Mae ffurf y nofel dditectif, er gwaethaf ei chonfensiynau fformiwlaig, yn cynnig mewnwelediad gwerthfawr i'r diwylliant y mae'n rhan ohoni. Fel llenyddiaeth boblogaidd mae'n gallu ymateb yn gyflym i newidiadau a thueddiadau cymdeithasol
gan amlygu gwerthoedd a phryderon y gymdeithas hon.
Gan fod Cymru yn cynhyrchu nofelau ditectif mewn dwy iaith wahanol codir y cwestiwn am y gwahaniaethau a'r cyffelebiaethau a geir rhwng y ddau garfan onofelau.
O fewn y traethawd hwn cymharir nofelau ditectif Cymraeg a nofelau ditectif EinglGymreig a gyhoeddwyd rhwng Ionawr 2000 a Hydref 2014. Rhoddir sylw arbennig i'r ditectif fel prif gymeriad y ffurf, i'r cyfnodau a'r lleoliadau a ddewisid gan yr awduron yn gefndir i'w nofelau, i'r testunau pennaf o fewn y nofelau hyn ac yn arbennig i'r darlun a geir o Gymru, y Cymry a'r Gymraeg.
Gyda'r traethawd hwn cyflwynir rhestrau cyflawn o'r nofelau ditectif Cymraeg ac Eingl-Gymreig a gyhoeddwyd yn y cyfnod dan sylw yn ogystal â thablau o brif nodweddion y nofelau hyn fel sylfaen ar gyfer ymchwil pellach.

The article offers an intermedial reading of Lloyd Jones's novel "See How They Run", part of the series that comprises novels retelling eleven tales from the earliest extant British collection of prose fiction known as the Mabinogion. In the article I explore verbally transmitted explicit and implicit references to the visual medium which, as I demonstrate, are used to repackage some of the most archaic aspects of the original text. By employing a theoretical framework developed by Boris Uspensky in his "A Poetics of Composition. The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of a Compositional Form", I argue that the novel's pictorial dimension mirrors perspectival systems of Renaissance and pre-Renaissance painting. I conclude that the transfer from the former to the latter, together with other visual elements, constitutes a significant component in Jones's strategy to transcribe the mythological and religious substratum of the medieval original.

The article offers an intermedial reading of Lloyd Jones’s novel See How They Run, part of the series that comprises novels retelling eleven tales from the earliest extant British collection of prose fiction known as the Mabinogion. In the article I explore verbally transmitted explicit and implicit references to the visual medium which, as I demonstrate, are used to repackage some of the most archaic aspects of the original text. By employing a theoretical framework developed by Boris Uspensky in his A Poetics of Composition. The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of a Compositional Form, I argue that the novel’s pictorial dimension mirrors perspectival systems of Renaissance and pre-Renaissance painting. I conclude that the transfer from the former to the latter, together with other visual elements, constitutes a significant component in Jones’s strategy to transcribe the mythological and religious substratum of the medieval original.