Full Description
The medieval Welsh bardic grammars were composed and transmitted during a period of intense social and political change in Wales. These documents, which contain both a highly Latinate description of the Welsh language and a treatment of the strict poetic metres, began their life as essentially vernacular artes poetriae. However, from the early fourteenth century to the end of the sixteenth, they were recopied and revised over and over by bards, bureaucrats, antiquarians, humanists, and the readers and reciters of poetry. At different times they served as practical handbooks, official regulatory documents and attempts to realign the Welsh texts with contemporary Latin and English scholarship. This book weaves a close textual analysis of the revisions made to the text into a broader consideration of the historical contexts that gave rise to each subsequent version. The resulting narrative offers insight into the development of Welsh bardic and scholarly practices over the course of two centuries.
Contents
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I. Background
Latin and Vernacular Grammar
Latin and Bardic Education
II. The Bardic Grammars
Authorship
Date
Content
Versions
Manuscripts
III. This Book
Chapter 1: A Welsh ars poetriae
I. Order of Composition
II. Latin Context
III. The Peniarth 20 Revision
Chapter 2: Tools for Reading
I. Literate Orientation and Archaism
II. Grammatica and Scientia Interpretandi
III. The Vernacular Canon
IV. The Readers and Reciters of Poetry
Chapter 3: 'Bardic' Grammars
I. Cynghanedd
Peniarth 126
Llanstephan 55
Peniarth 161
II. Syllables and Diphthongs
Bangor 1
Peniarth 189
Llanstephan 55
III. Evidence from the Poetic Corpus
Chapter 4: Official Documents
I. The Eisteddfodau and the Statute of Gruffudd ap Cynan
II. Artificial Abbreviations
III. Cerdd Dafod and Cerdd Dant
Chapter 5: Bardic Humanism
I. Bards and Humanists
II. Salesbury's Books and Lily's Grammar
III. Renaissance Rhetoric
IV. The Return Ad Fontes
Conclusion
Appendix: Translation of the Red Book of Hergest
Notes on the translation
