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Seminar: Guto’r Glyn: Welsh poetry of the fifteenth century

Monday evenings at 5pm, beginning 5 October 2015, Seminar Room, School of Celtic Studies, DIAS, 10 Burlington Road, Dublin 4

Barry Lewis will read a selection of fifteenth-century Welsh bardic poems from the new online edition of the works of Guto’r Glyn, perhaps the best-known of the poets of the so-called CanrifFawr or ‘Great Century’ of Welsh poetry.

The selection will cover both serious and humorous genres, including praise, elegy, political comment and bardic disputation. We will begin with Guto’s most ambitious poem, composed in praise of William Herbert after he took the castle of Harlech for the Yorkists in 1468, and after that we will read Guto’s powerful elegy for Herbert from the aftermath of the disastrous battle of Edgecote or Banbury in 1469.

Texts will be provided, as well as translations, in order that those unfamiliar with Middle Welsh will still be able to benefit from the seminar. No prior knowledge of Welsh is required.

All texts and translations are available online at www.gutorglyn.net. The first text is poem 21,‘Tri llu aeth i Gymru gynt’.