History and Identity in Early Medieval Wales
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A01=Rebecca Thomas
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Armes Prydein Vawr
Asser’s Life of King Alfred
Author_Rebecca Thomas
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Category1=Non-Fiction
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Celtic studies
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Early Medieval Wales
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Historia Brittonum
Language_English
Medieval historical writing
Medieval history
Medieval Latin texts
Medieval Welsh Language and Literature
Medieval Welsh Poetry
Medieval Welsh Politics
national identity
nations and nationalism
origin legends
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Price_€50 to €100
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Religion and the Church
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the Brittonic-speaking peoples
the ‘Old North’
Wales and the Welsh
Product details
- ISBN 9781843846277
- Weight: 415g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 12 Apr 2022
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Crucial texts from ninth- and tenth-century Wales analysed to show their key role in identify formation.
WINNER OF THE FRANCIS JONES PRIZE 2022
Early medieval writers viewed the world as divided into gentes ("peoples"). These were groups that could be differentiated from each other according to certain characteristics - by the language they spoke or the territory they inhabited, for example. The same writers played a key role in deciding which characteristics were important and using these to construct ethnic identities. This book explores this process of identity construction in texts from early medieval Wales, focusing primarily on the early ninth-century Latin history of the Britons (Historia Brittonum), the biography of Alfred the Great composed by the Welsh scholar Asser in 893, and the tenth-century vernacular poem Armes Prydein Vawr ("The Great Prophecy of Britain"). It examines how these writers set about distinguishing between the Welsh and the other gentes inhabiting the island of Britain through the use of names, attention to linguistic difference, and the writing of history and origin legends. Crucially important was the identity of the Welsh as Britons, the rightful inhabitants of the entirety of Britain; its significance and durability are investigated, alongside its interaction with the emergence of an identity focused on the geographical unit of Wales.
Rebecca Thomas is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Cardiff University.
