Welsh Literature

The United Kingdom constituent country of Wales has a proud literary tradition, with a continuous succession of Welsh-language works bridging a timeline from the sixth to the twenty-first centuries. Gradually evolving from an oral into a written tradition, Welsh literature entered what scholars broadly describe as its modern phase during the Renaissance (ca. 1400–ca. 1600), Reformation (1517–ca. 1555), and Counter-Reformation (1545–1648) eras of British and European history.

The 1893 establishment of the University of Wales is widely regarded as a seminal event in the ongoing history of Welsh culture. Its founding foretold the subsequent flourishing of contemporary Welsh literature, which expanded to include a full breadth of literary genres across prose, poetic, and dramatic forms.

A large number of Welsh writers have earned acclaim and achieved elevated status in the English-language literary canon. Though strict definitions of Welsh literature restrict their focus to works in the Welsh language, others include English-language works by Welsh writers.

Background

Apart from the classical tongues of Latin and Greek, the Welsh language has Europe’s oldest continuous literary tradition. Welsh is considered the oldest language indigenous to the British Isles, with linguists tracing its origins to approximately four thousand years ago. The Welsh tongue belongs to the Brythonic (Brittonic) branch of the Celtic language family and first evolved into its written form during the historical era known as Roman Britain (43–410). Roman influence also impacted the evolution of the Welsh language, introducing Latin structural and lexical characteristics.

The word Cymry has been used to describe the Welsh people since at least the seventh century, with the related word Cymru representing the Welsh word for the country of Wales. Offa’s Dyke, constructed in the eighth century, historically served as the border separating Wales in western Great Britain from England in eastern Great Britain. The Welsh language thrived to the west of Offa’s Dyke for centuries until English emerged as the dominant tongue in Britain. English rulers later launched linguistic and cultural assimilation campaigns targeting regional cultures and languages including Welsh and Cornish. Such efforts involved both the use of force and legislative tools, including the Act of Union, authorized by King Henry VIII (1491–1547) in 1536. The Act of Union explicitly outlawed the use of Welsh in British public institutions. It was followed in 1549 by the Act of Uniformity, passed by the English parliament during the reign of King Edward VI (1537–1553), which prohibited the performance of religious services in any language other than English. The combined impacts of these acts led to a general decline in minority languages in Britain, including Welsh.

Welsh continued to decline during the Industrial Revolution (ca. 1760–ca. 1840) and into the twentieth century, with the influential Welsh literary critic, author, and activist Saunders Lewis (1893–1985) predicting in the early 1960s its demise as a living language by the century’s end. Lewis’s prediction ultimately proved to be a catalyst for the dramatic revival of Welsh in the second half of the twentieth century that returned the language to thriving status. According to government statistics, Wales was home to approximately 891,800 Welsh speakers in 2023, with about one-quarter of the country’s population speaking it as a first or second language, or otherwise being able to communicate in or understand the ancient tongue.

Overview

The history of Welsh literature can be broadly divided into multiple periods, with the simplest such classifications separating it into early and modern Welsh literature. Early Welsh literature spans from the origins of the Welsh literary tradition until the post-Renaissance and post-Reformation eras, which marked the rise of the modern period. Multiple distinct phases describe the historical stages of Welsh literature within these two main eras.

Early Welsh Literature and the Welsh Oral Tradition

During its early history, Welsh literature primarily existed within a highly structured oral tradition. A specialized class of lyrical poets known as bards were the primary guardians of Welsh literary culture, training specially selected students in the poetic and rhetorical arts. The earliest known examples of Welsh poetry date to the late sixth century and recount battles between Welsh forces and their English adversaries from eastern Great Britain. One of the oldest Welsh-language poems to have survived this era, Y Gododdin, is a collection of elegies for those who died in a battle between Saxons and Britons. It dates to about 594 and is believed to contain the first known mention of the mythical literary figure King Arthur.

The oldest known examples of written Welsh date to about the eighth century and consist of notations to Latin scholarly, religious, and technical manuscripts. Experts note that these nascent forms of written Welsh display obvious Latin influences, reflecting the legacy of the Roman occupation of Great Britain during previous centuries.

Welsh Literature of the Medieval Period

Medieval Welsh literature primarily consists of poetry written in honor of Welsh princes, who commissioned poets to compose verse-form literary works praising their patrons’ virtue and leadership. This system of patronage, which literary historians describe as a strategic tool used by rulers to elevate their public standing, was far more common in Wales than other parts of Britain and Europe. Welsh authors of the period from 1100 to 1300 are informally known as the Poets of the Princes, with a successor group known as the Poets of the Nobility thriving from about 1300 to 1500 after England’s conquest of Wales prompted a restructuring of Welsh society. One of the most acclaimed and prolific poets in Welsh history, Dafydd ap Gwylim (ca. 1315–ca. 1370), wrote during the Poets of the Nobility era.

Prose works also achieved elevated standing in the Welsh literature of the Medieval period, with four prose compositions by an unknown author collectively known as the Mabinogior Mabinogionproving particularly influential. The Mabinogidescribes the heroic and magical feats of King Arthur and his loyal knights. Translations of the work went on to become highly influential in other European countries including England and France. Other notable Medieval Welsh prose-form works of literature include legal codes, national histories, and religious works recounting the lives and deeds of Welsh figures who achieved Catholic sainthood.

The Modern Period and the Welsh Literary Renaissance

The ideals of the Renaissance inspired Welsh cultural and literary leaders to assert Welsh as worthy of full standing among the canonical languages of Britain and Europe. After a period of decline brought on by the cultural and linguistic assimilation policies mandated in England, Welsh literature experienced a revival in the eighteenth century that broadly spanned two distinct styles: a new movement inspired by European Romanticism and a classical movement known as the Welsh literary renaissance.

Brothers Lewis (1701–1765), Richard (1703–1779), and William Morris (1705–1763) are recognized as the founding and driving figures of the Welsh literary Renaissance. Deeply loyal to Wales and Welsh culture, the Morris brothers embarked on a project to rediscover and conserve classical Welsh texts and manuscripts. They also inspired a literary movement modeled after the bardic verse of Wales’s ancient past, of which poet Goronwy Owen (1723–1769) became a leading practitioner.

Contemporary Welsh-Language Literature

The Industrial Revolution marked a period of strong English-language dominance over Welsh culture, bringing the Welsh literary renaissance to a definitive end and marking a precipitous decline in Welsh-language literary production. This began to change at the turn of the twentieth century, when a concerted Welsh revival movement took hold and began to dramatically increase the presence and visibility of the Welsh language through cultural protection and educational programs. Welsh cultural and literary historians frequently cite the 1893 founding of the University of Wales as an important catalyst for the Welsh revival. The university provided an institutional space for the preservation and resuscitation of the Welsh language and its cultural traditions, inspiring a new generation of Welsh-language authors to create works spanning all major literary genres during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Notably, Welsh-language drama flourished for the first time in modern history during the post-revival period. A leading voice in this new period was T. Gwynn Jones (1871-1949), a poet, novelist, literary critic and translator whose poem “Ymadawiad Arthur” (“The Departure of Arthur”) won the National Eisteddfod in 1902.

Welsh Literature in the English Language

Many Welsh-born authors have achieved extensive critical and popular claims for their English-language works. Though traditionalists do not generally consider these works to be representative examples of Welsh literature, their influence on the English canon has occasionally reached profound levels. Examples of these literary figures include the poets R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) and Dylan Thomas (1914–1953), novelist and short story author Roald Dahl (1916–1990), travel writer and historian Jan Morris (1926–2020), former National Poets of Wales Gillian Clarke (1937—) and Ifor Ap Glyn (1961—), and the author, poet, and playwright Owen Sheers (1974—).

Bibliography

Cannon, Nicholas. "Wales: The Language and the People." Government of the United Kingdom, 1 Mar. 2013, www.gov.uk/government/speeches/wales-the-language-and-the-people. Accessed 31 Oct. 2024.

Chapman, Robin T. The Oxford Literary History of Wales: Volume 2, Writing in Welsh, ca. 1740-2010: A Troubled Heritage. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Evans, Geraint, and Helen Fulton. The Cambridge History of Welsh Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Griffiths, James. "Why the Revival of Welsh Became a Model for Minority Languages across the Globe." Nation Cymru, 26 Nov. 2021, nation.cymru/opinion/why-the-revival-of-welsh-became-a-model-for-minority-languages-across-the-globe/. Accessed 31 Oct. 2024.

Roberts, Brynley F. "Oral Tradition and Welsh Literature: A Description and Survey." Oral Traditions, vol. 3, no. 1-2, 1988, pp. 61-87.

Tann, Kathryn. "Wales: The Thriving Literature Scene Which Deserves Our Full Attention." British Council, 26 Apr. 2021, wales.britishcouncil.org/en/blog/wales-thriving-literature-scene-which-deserves-our-full-attention. Accessed 31 Oct. 2024.