Search results for ""University of Wales Press""

This work addresses the question of female spirituality within medieval theological and devotional writings by examining texts in which women play a significant role, either as authors, recipients, or subjects. It suggests that these texts express the idea of "female vernacular theology".

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This is a study of the lower orders within Welsh rural communities and pays attention to those people who worked and lived off the land of 18th century Wales, often amidst grinding poverty and insecurity.

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Christoph Hein is widely regarded as one of the most important writers to emerge from the former GDR. This volume contains an interview with Hein, a previously unpublished prose piece by him, an up-to-date biography and critical articles which examine individual texts in detail.

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This work offers a modern appraisal of the Welsh Methodist leader and revivalist, Howell Harris. His influence on the development of early Methodism is charted and the period from his conversion in 1735 to his secession with Daniel Rowland is examined.

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In this novel, Peredur defies both his mother's hostility and his brothers' lack of concern to seek out the truth of his father's death and to take part in a protest against the 1969 Investiture that goes violently wrong. Only at the end when Amy Parry faces death can reconciliation be achieved.

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This is a survey of the phenomena relating to Islam and the Internet. Technology is making a global impact on how Muslims approach and interpret Islam. Given its utilization as a primary source of information, the Internet influences how non-Muslims perceive Islam and matters relating to Muslims.

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When the Gypsies first arrived in the British Isles, sometime in the second half of the fifteenth century, they brought with them their own language and, it may be assumed, a body of traditional song, little of which is preserved today. Now Shoon the Romano Gillie gathers together the largest published collection of extant traditional verse in Welsh Romani and Romani English. In his introduction, Tim Coughlan places the material firmly within its linguistic and cultural tradition, explains its characteristics and underlying modes of thought and, by drawing upon a range of related material, underlines its links with both its own European Romani roots and with other native British and Irish traditions, including those of Scottish and Irish travellers. The texts themselves are fully annotated to provide the necessary historical and cultural background. In addition to being the first attempt at a comprehensive overview of the field, Now Shoon the Romano Gillie also contributes to debates on the emergence of Romani English as a reduced form of an older inflected language. It will be an invaluable resource for students of the Gypsy language and traditional song, as well as all those with interests in Traveller communities and cultures.

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This work reveals the story of women's lives in Wales during the 20th century. The areas of women's lives explored include: education; health; home life; leisure; politics; and waged work. The regional variations and differing linguistic and cultural traditions are also investigated.

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Biography of John Jones ('Talhaiarn', 1810-69), poet and author of words of popular songs of the age, a cerdd dant performer and eisteddfodic leader, but also an architectural overseer who worked mainly outside the land of his birth. 16 black-and-white photographs.

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The Spanish Civil War was a time of repression and political conflict, the art of the theatre suffering with other art mediums and the Spanish people as a whole. This text draws upon rare and previously unpublished material in order to study this subject.

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A study of the images of the Welsh female as seen in nineteenth century Welsh literature.

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A biography of Ambrose Bebb, based on diaries and other family papers, which looks at his creative writing in the context of his life's circumstances. Ten black-and-white photographs and illustrations.

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The second in a series, this volume traces the history of the federal University of Wales from its foundation in 1893 to the eve of World War II and places it in the broad background of higher education in Britain. The main strands of academic advance are considered along with the architecture of the principal buildings of the University. There are chapters on student life and the impact of the Great War. Since the University and its colleges were largely the product of a national movement the last two chapters of the book are devoted to the relationship between university and nation and to the nature of Welsh society during a period of cultural awakening which, argues the author, owed much to the University of Wales.

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This volume gathers together Glyn Jones's previously published poems, together with a number that appear for the first time.

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This text argues that communication is the foundation on which a society is based and the means by which it maintains political, economic and social relationships with other societies. Issues covered include who "owns" information, and what the cultural implications of the information age will be.

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This is a biography of the poet Nikolay Zabolotsky, written by his son, illustrated with examples of his work and telling in detail the story of his arrest during Stalin's terror, eight years of prison and exile, and stubborn survival. Since his death, Nikolay Zabolotsky has come to be recognized as a writer of international importance, on a par with Pasternak of Mandelshtam: but compared with them he has been little studied or translated, and until recently aspects of both his life and his work remained mysterious. During the experimental period of Russian art in the 1920s he was a member of the Oberiu movement which this biography documents. In 1938, though uninterested in politics, he was arrested and remained in prison and exile until 1946, after which (with much difficulty) he resumed writing. The whole episode is not only a moving and exemplary human story, but also a notable case study in the effects of Stalin's terror. It makes use of the testimony of family and friends, as well as of material from KGB archives, only recently made available. It also constitutes an introduction to a Zabolotsky's body of poetry. The book contains, as appendices, Zabolotsky's own "The Story of My Imprisonment" and the hitherto secret text of the writer Lesyuchevsky's denunciation of Zabolotsky to the secret police. There is also an anthology of Zabolotsky poems in English translation by Daniel Weissbort and Robin Milner-Gulland and biographical notes on a host of literary figures from the 1920s onwards. The volume is illustrated with a number of early photographs.

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"A History of Wales 1660-1815" is the second volume of a trilogy on the history of Wales from 1485 to 1906. Beginning with the political activity of the period, the author traces developments in education, the religious explosion of the Methodist Revival, the roots of industrial growth, the rhythms of agricultural life, the stirrings of Welsh Radicalism and the strands which made up the cultural revival of the eighteenth century.

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A volume tracing the history and development of the University of Wales published to celebrate the centenary of its founding in 1893 . Black-and-white photographs.

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This work argues that the heritage of Wales is being exploited and cheapened by the creation of tourist "experiences" which trade on nostalgia. It calls for integrity and authenticity in the interpretation of Welsh heritage, emphasizing the need for careful selection of sites and artefacts. The text is essentially a survey from which implications not only for the development of museums and interpretative centres in Wales but also for other parts of the United Kingdom. It should be of interest to all those who work in the "heritage industry", to their public and to anyone concernbed about the way in which the past is being presented.

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The poignant autobiography of a poor Welsh farm-boy who struggled vainly to achieve education and identity, giving a firsthand account of the changing society and culture of mid-nineteenth-century Wales.

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Welsh Surnames is the first full-scale study of Welsh surnames and is both a classification and a dictionary. Based on Welsh, Latin and English texts, on parish registers and local histories, it traces the growth of a Welsh surnaming pattern in Wales and the Border at the end of the Middle Ages. This historical picture is completed by evidence taken from modern sources such as electoral registers from Wales and western England, surnames from Welsh and London newspapers, and telephone directories. The book opens with a classification of the various kinds of Welsh surnames besides the innumerable examples of the well-known Welsh patronymic surname; surnames from hypocoristic forms, from anglicisations and approximations of Welsh names, from the forenames of women, from place-names, and many others. This is followed by a dictionary of Welsh surnames which also gives attention to variations and corruptions of the original names. Welsh Surnames is aimed both at the specialist and the general reader as an invaluable tool not only for the historian or the genealogist but also the geographer and sociologist.

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This book presents a brief introduction to each writer, centring on a particular work ("Les Fleurs du mal, Les Mains sales, La peste") and imediately followed by a commentary on an extract (the Baudelaire poem chose is '"Le Cygne"'). Professor Rees ends by presenting some pointers on the nature of twentieth century French literature in general, as a guide to the student beginner.

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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 c

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What comes to mind when we think of swans? Likely their beauty in domestic settings, their preserved status, their association with royalty, and possibly even the phrase ‘swan song’. This book explores the emergence of each of these ideas, starting with an examination of the medieval swan in natural history, exploring classical writings and their medieval interpretations and demonstrating how the idea of a swan’s song developed. The book then proceeds to consider literary motifs of swan-to-human transformation, particularly the legend of the Knight of the Swan. Although this legend is known today largely through Wagner’s opera, it was a best-seller in the Middle Ages, and courts throughout Europe strove to be associated as descendants of this Swan Knight. Consequently, the swan was projected as an icon of courtly and eventual royal status. The book’s third chapter looks at the swan as icon of the Lancasters, particularly important during the reign of Richard II and the War of the Roses, and the final chapter examines the swan as an important item of feasting, focusing on cookery and husbandry to argue that over time the right to keep swans became an increasingly restricted right controlled by the English crown. Each of the swan’s medieval associations are explored as they developed over time to the modern day. 　

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In the medieval Low Countries (modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands), Arthurian romance flourished in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Middle Dutch poets translated French material (like Chretien's Conte du Graal and the Prose Lancelot), but also created romances of their own, like Walewein. This book provides a current overview of the Dutch Arthurian material and the research that it has provoked. Geographically, the region is a crossroads between the French and Germanic spheres of influence, and the movement of texts and manuscripts (West to East) reflects its position, as revealed by chapters on the historical context, the French material and the Germanic Arthuriana of the Rhinelands. Three chapters on the translations of French verse texts, the translations of French prose texts, and on the indigenous romances form the core of the book, augmented by chapters on the manuscripts, on Arthur in the chronicles, and on the post-medieval Arthurian material.

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Dyma’r astudiaeth gyflawn gyntaf o eirfa Dafydd ap Gwilym. Dangosir ynddi sut y creodd Dafydd farddoniaeth gyfoethog ac amlweddog trwy gyfuno ieithwedd hen a newydd, llenyddol a llafar, brodorol ac estron. Trafodir y geiriau a gofnodwyd am y tro olaf yn ei waith, a’r nifer fawr a welir am y tro cyntaf, y benthyciadau o ieithoedd eraill, ei ddulliau o ffurfio geiriau cyfansawdd, a geirfa arbenigol amryw feysydd fel crefydd, y gyfraith, masnach a’r meddwl dynol. Roedd y bedwaredd ganrif ar ddeg yn gyfnod o newid mawr yn yr iaith Gymraeg yn sgil datblygiadau cymdeithasol a dylanwadau gan ieithoedd eraill, a manteisiodd Dafydd ar yr ansefydlogrwydd i greu amwysedd cyfrwys. Trwy sylwi’n fanwl ar y defnydd o eiriau gan Ddafydd a’i gyfoeswyr datgelir haenau newydd o ystyr sy’n cyfoethogi ein dealltwriaeth o waith un o feirdd mwyaf yr iaith Gymraeg.

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Although it has long been acknowledged that the early Irish literary corpus preserves both pre-Christian and Christian elements, the challenges involved in the understanding of these different strata have not been subjected to critical examination. This volume draws attention to the importance of reconsidering the relationship between religion and mythology, as well as the concept of ‘Celtic religion’ itself. When scholars are attempting to construct the so-called ‘Celtic’ belief system, what counts as ‘religion’? Or, when labelling something as ‘religion’ as opposed to ‘mythology’, what do these entities entail? This volume is the first interdisciplinary collection of articles which critically reevaluates the methodological challenges of the study of ‘Celtic religion’; the authors are eminent scholars in the field of Celtic Studies representing the disciplines of theology, literary studies, history, law and archaeology, and the book represents a significant contribution to the present scholarly debate concerning the pre-Christian elements in early medieval source materials. Contents 1 Introduction: ‘Celtic Religion’: Is this a Valid Concept?, Alexandra Bergholm and Katja Ritari 2 Celtic Spells and Counterspells, Jacqueline Borsje (available Open Access at the University of Amsterdam Digital Academic Repository) 3 The Gods of Ireland in the Later Middle Ages, John Carey 4 Staging the Otherworld in Medieval Irish Literature, Joseph Falaky Nagy 5 The Biblical Dimension of Early Medieval Latin Texts, Thomas O’Loughlin 6 Ancient Irish Law Revisited: Rereading the Laws of Status and Franchise, Robin Chapman Stacey 7 A Dirty Window on the Iron Age? Recent Developments in the Archaeology of Pre-Roman Celtic Religion, Jane Webster

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Two months after being posted to France in 1917, Edward Thomas wrote: 'I already know enough to confirm my old opinion that the papers tell no truth at all about what war is and what soldiers are - '. This anthology provides an impression of what it meant to be a soldier on the Western front in the First World War and, above all, what it meant to be a Welsh soldier. Although this collection of writings, prose and poetry, includes such famous names as Edward Thomas, Robert Graves, David Jones and Saunders Lewis, the pieces have been chosen not purely by literary criteria, but to reflect as wide a range as possible of experience within Welsh military units. These personal reminiscences record not just horrific and dramatic events, soldiers under artillery bombardment or coping with mud, or the confusion of attacks or retreats, but also routine activities - the everyday working parties to repair trenches, the tunnelling, the waiting, the food, the blisters and the cold - and the comradeship in the Welsh regiments. Some additional background military information is provided in the appendices.

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This is a new edition of the first full-length English-language study of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (c.1225 - 82), prince of Wales. In this scholarly and lucid book, J. Beverley Smith offers an in-depth assessment not only of Llywelyn, but of the age in which he lived. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd: Prince of Wales is an outstanding work by an author with a perceptive knowledge of the complexities of his subject. This examination of the triumphs and subsequent reverses of a ruler of exceptional vision and vigour is a substantial contribution to our understanding of the nature of Welsh politics and the complexities of Anglo-Welsh relations. The author takes thirteenth-century Wales as a backdrop against which he analyses the relationship between a sense of nationhood and the practical realities of creating a structure to embrace a unified principality of Wales held under the aegis of the English Crown.

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From the twelfth century onwards the legends of King Arthur and his knights, including the Tristan legend, spread across Europe, producing a vast range of adaptations and new stories. German and Dutch literature were of central importance in this expansion of Arthurian material from the 12th to 16th century. This title deals with this topic.

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The Llyn Cerrig Bach assemblage is one of the most important collections of La Tene metalwork discovered in the British Isles. Presenting a typological study of this collection of Iron Age metalwork, this volume includes discussions of metalwork and insular La Tene art chronology, fieldwork at the site and metallurgical analysis of the assemblage.

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Ever since its rediscovery in 1934, "The Book of Margery Kempe" has generally been judged to be over-emotional and its structure regarded as at worst non-existent, at best naive. Naoe Kukita Yoshikawa argues instead that the book unfolds a creative experience of memory as spiritual progress, and explores Margery's meditational experience in the context of visual and verbal iconography. She provides a comprehensive analysis of Margery's meditative experience as it is structured in the book, paying particular attention to five major meditational experiences that influence her spiritual progress and develop a coherent theology.

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This is the final volume of the dictionary. It presents in alphabetical order the vocabulary of the Welsh language from the remnants of old Welsh, through the abundant literature of the Mediaval and modern periods. To order parts of the Second Edition visit our Librarians page.

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In this volume the author, Hauke Brunkhorst, not only emphasizes the well-known links between Adorno and the dialectical thinking of Hegel and Marx, but also the connection between Adorno and Kant. The book sheds light on Adorno's negative dialectic.

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A concise and authoritative survey of the Welsh- and English-language literatures of Wales from the earliest period up to the present day. This illustrated guide, containing extracts from original texts with English translations, is a revised version of Professor Dafydd Johnston’s volume in the University of Wales Press Pocket Guide series, and includes a new chapter on contemporary writing.

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In this authoritative book, Richard Wyn Jones traces the development of the political thought of Plaid Cymru from its birth in the winter months of 19245 to the establishment of the National Assembly for Wales in the summer of 1999. With a penetrating study of the political beliefs of Plaid Cymru's most important leaders Saunders Lewis, Gwynfor Evans, Dafydd Elis-Thomas and Dafydd Wigley Wyn Jones charts the party's emergence from the political fringe to the threshold of a devolved Wales. The development of the party's constitutional and economic policies is given close attention, as well as its attitude towards the Welsh language; and from a vibrant discussion on the nature of nationalism and nationalist ideas, Plaid Cymru's intellectual development takes its place within a broader historical and international context. The result reveals Plaid Cymru in a new and sometimes controversial light.

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In a famous review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse, Herman Melville took the critics to task for missing the darkness as the heart of Hawthorne's writing a blackness ten times black', as Melville put it, that fascinated him. Ironically, Melville has been subject to the same treatment by critics who have in large measure steered clear of Melville's own darkness. The contributors to Gothic Melville reveal that, if Hawthorne's darkness is ten times black, then Melville's is a hundred times so, as his works repeatedly raise questions about what the truth is or if truth exists at all. This edited collection of scholarly essays makes up for the critical neglect of Melville's Gothicism by arguing that the Gothic is so extensively interwoven into the fabric of his writing that Melville must at last be recognised as among the genre's most important practitioners.

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How did the Welsh travel beyond their geographical borders in the Middle Ages? What did they do, what did they take with them in their baggage, and what did they bring back? This book seeks for the first time to capture the medieval Welsh on the move, and core to its purpose is the exploration of identity within and outside the Welsh territories - particularly since `Welsh' may have become a fluid term to describe a stranger, often pejoratively. The contributors also seek to explore the nature of `Welsh history' as a discipline. How can a consideration of the Welsh abroad draw upon wider paradigms of nationhood, diaspora and colonisation; economic migration; gender relations; and the pursuit of educational, religious and cultural opportunities? Is there anything specifically `Welsh' about the experiences of medieval migrants and correspondents? And what can the medieval experience of Welsh people exploring the then known world contribute to the longer-term history of emigration and exchange? Examining archaeological, historical and literary evidence together, this book enables a better understanding of the ways in which people from Wales interacted with and understood their near and distant neighbours.

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Tony Brown provides an introduction to R.S. Thomas's life and work, as well as new perspectives and insights for those already familiar with the poetry. His approach is broadly chronological, interweaving life and work in order to evaluate Thomas's poetic achievement, in addition to presenting a full discussion of Thomas's poetry, and its development over time. New edition.

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If the story of Wales in the 1990s was a movie plot, it would all seem so far-fetched. Thankfully, it was all true. The 1970s and 80s were a bleak time for much of Wales: the closure of steel works and coal mines led to mass unemployment while the country's culture and language was disregarded by politicians and the music industry alike. Some bands even travelled across the Severn Bridge to make sure their records arrived at the London offices sporting an English postmark. The 1990s changed everything. While Wales was already known for Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey and Male Voices Choirs, but bands such as Catatonia, Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics and Super Furry Animals exploded into the charts and showed the UK population the breadth of what this small but inherently musical nation could offer. Meanwhile, S4C the Welsh-language television channel became increasingly prominent and a new Welsh Assembly was on the horizonFeaturing fresh analysis and new interviews, Internationa

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"Understanding Contemporary Wales" provides an engaging and accessible introduction to the politics, culture, society and economy of modern Wales. The first half of the book examines the differences that are found in Wales, while the second half focuses on the connections that have been forged across these differences and that structure Welsh society. Through reflective activities, case studies, further reading and a wide range of documentary sources, the book explores key concepts and debates in the social sciences while providing an up-to-the-minute account of contemporary Wales.

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Born in 1473, Margaret Pole was the daughter of George, duke of Clarence, niece of both Edward IV and Richard III, and the only woman, apart from Anne Boleyn, to hold a peerage title in her own right during the sixteenth century. She was restored by Henry VIII to her executed brother's earldom of Salisbury in 1512. In the 1530s, however, her deep Catholic convictions became increasingly out of favour with Henry and she was executed on a charge of treason in 1541 aged sixty-seven. In 1886, Margaret Pole was among sixty-three martyrs beatified by Pope Leo XIII for not hesitating 'to lay down their lives by shedding of their blood' for the dignity of the Holy See. In this first biography of a significant female figure in the male-dominated world of Tudor politics, Hazel Pierce presents the life and culture of this propertied, titled lady against the social and political background of late Yorkist and early Tudor Britain. Containing important new research on aristocratic life and court politics in the period, and including a complete reappraisal of the so-called 'Exeter conspiracy', Margaret Pole is a major contribution to our understanding of Henry VIII's relationship with the nobility, and the political, social and cultural position of women in sixteenth-century England.

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I awoke from a deep sleep I had taken under the shade of a tree in a field at the outskirts of a dark wood, without remembering how I had gotten there, or, indeed, where it was exactly, I had gotten.'So begins a most unusual odyssey, in which a writer who bears a striking similarity to our author, Gary Raymond allows himself to be led through the many-layered realms of Welsh literature, not by Virgil but by the late Professor Raymond Williams. Taking in the history of Welsh writing in English from the legacy of the bardic tradition to contemporary experimental works, Abandon All Hope introduces Welsh literature in a way it has never been presented before as cutting edge, experimental, vibrant, exciting, intimate, and with a multitude of voices. This voyage into a uniquely Welsh Inferno offers a revolutionary new way to examine and explain literary history, traversing elements of chronology and genre, in a wide-ranging and, above all, highly entertaining manifesto for a new percept

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Earthy Matters is a lively collection of theoretically informed chapters that introduce the reader to the notion that matter is a creative agent, and that it plays a key role in the formation of our material and social worlds. The focus of the book is sediments, soils, clay and earth - materials that surround us and have shaped people's interactions with the environment since even before the first farmers settled in the Near East tilling the earth, building houses from mud and plaster, and making vessels and figurines from clay. This collection questions orthodox understandings that these substances are inert and an infinite resource for humanity, rather to foreground earthy substances in their relationships with humans, and to show how these materials have co-created our social and material worlds. It is a novel and timely reminder for the reader that our lives have always been embedded within the matter of the E(e)arth.

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