Search results for ""university of wales press""

In "The Language of the Blue Books", Gwyneth Tyson Roberts examines the Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales, published in 1847. This report, also known as the "Treachery of the Blue Books", castigated the Welsh working class as ignorant, lazy, and immoral. Roberts analyzes the historical, social, and political contexts within which this report was published, arguing that its choice and use of language undermines its own claims to authority and objectivity.

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This first comprehensive treatment of Arthurian literature in the English language up until the end of the Middle Ages is now available for the first time in paperback. English people think of Arthur as their own - stamped on the landscape in scores of place-names, echoed in the names of princes even today. Yet some would say the English were the historical Arthur's bitterest enemies and usurpers of his heritage. The process by which Arthurian legends have become an important part of England's cultural heritage is traced in this book. Previous studies have concentrated on the handful of chivalric romances, which have given the impression that Arthur is a hero of romantic escapism. This study seeks to provide a more comprehensive and insightful look at the English Arthurian legends and how they evolved. It focuses primarily upon the literary aspects of Arthurian legend, but it also makes some important political and social observations.

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Gothic Contemporaries: The Haunted Text is the first of its kind to align selected 21st century fiction with a revised understanding of the gothic through themes such as signification, communication, ethics, inheritance and currency.

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A Welsh translation of Strindberg's famous play which is an exellent example of nineteenth-century Naturalistic Theatre together with a translation of the playwright's original preface. New edition.

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The book successfully discusses Brown's seven novels, including all other significant material, focusing on the subgenres of the Gothic, arguing that Brown is of significant value in the study of Gothic literature, and that his work remains important today.

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This is the first full-length history of 20th-century Christianity in Wales. Beginning with a description of religion and its place in society in 1914, it assesses the effect which the Great War made on people's spiritual convictions and on religious opinion and practise. It proceeds to analyse the state of the disestablished church in Wales, an increasingly confident Catholicism and the growing inter-war crisis of Nonconformity. Liberal Theology and the Social Gospel, the fundamentalist impulse and the churches response to economic dislocation and political change are discussed, as is the much less traumatic effect of the Second World War.

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Eirene White’s The Ladies of Gregynog tells the story of Gwendoline and Margaret Davies, inheritors of great wealth at the end of the nineteenth century, and unique among their wealthy contemporaries in the early twentieth century. The two sisters devoted their large fortune to fostering the culture of their native Wales and, in 1920, acquired the Gregynog estate with the intention of establishing a craft commune. Today, almost a century later, Gregynog hall is a centre devoted to academic study, the revived Gregynog Press and a continuing tradition of music festivals in the fine setting of the estate gardens and arboretum. First published in 1985.

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In current debates, the term cosmopolitanismA" often remains quite vague and leads to sweeping generalizations. Unlike many recent publications, this book looks at the notion from a decidedly historical perspective, trying to give depth and texture to the concept.

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This is an introduction to the life and work of Kate Roberts, the most important woman writer ever to have emerged from Wales. It offers a comprehensive account of her life, from her birth into a life of poverty and hardship in the slate-quarrying region of Snowdonia to her death almost a hundred years later in Denbigh; in between, she had attended University, at a time when very few Welsh women did, worked as an impassioned and inspirational teacher in the south Wales valleys, run a major printing press and published the main Welsh national newspaper, Y Faner, helped to found Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Nationalist Party, campaigned tirelessly for the Welsh language, challenged gender stereotypes and restrictions in traditional patriarchal Wales, and produced a body of literary work in the Welsh language which makes her rank alongside Saunders Lewis as the greatest Welsh writer of the twentieth century.

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Life on Mars (2006-07), is one of the most talked-about television drama events of the last decade. Centring on Sam Tyler, a DI in 2006 who is inexplicably catapulted back to 1973 after an accident, the series mixes science fiction with police drama. This collection, the first extended account of Life on Mars, includes contributions by some of the most experienced television studies researchers, and extends the discussion to the series' follow-up, Ashes to Ashes (2008-10), set in 1981, considers the series' impact in the USA and the critical and popular response to the Spanish and American remakes.

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This pioneering volume examines the numerous, multi-layered and co-reactionary influences on the extraordinary growth of the Welsh medium Schools of south-east Wales. This is not a history, but a multi-discipline, linguistic, social, psychological, political and educational study analysing the struggle it is argued which was chiefly responsible for overturning the linguistic shift. Equally extraordinary is the fact that no similar study has been conducted before. Balance is maintained between critical study and empiric research. The quantitative evidence is based on the responses received to representative samples of over 700 pupils and teachers using various questionnaires, and on data available via Estyn reports and statistical sources. Quantitative evidence was gathered via interviews with individuals ranging from central government to local, the civil service and Local Education Authorities, the Inspectorate, parents and governors, school heads and voluntary groups. It is argued that the power of the sector's dynamo was driven from the bottom up, from the direction of teachers, and parents in particular, but that individuals within local, national and international politics used their discretion on a meso and macro level to influence support structures which, more often than not, facilitated the actors' efforts. More than policies or parties, individuals proved to be the main influences. The theoretical and conceptual structures of macro language, identity, structure and actor are described in order to unravel the complex weave of influences, and these are the frameworks on which the powers at work in the movementA"'s development were analysed on its long and arduous journey towards national linguistic paradise. The Welsh School is, therefore, placed in a global context.

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This book explores the neglected history of women who were active in Liberal politics, campaigning for women's rights, the vote, and a full role for women in Welsh public life, at the end of the nineteenth century, and before the First World War. The over-arching argument of the book is that Welsh women's Liberal politics was distinctive, in its attempt to integrate an understanding of Liberalism which they shared with their English counterparts, and which included the aim of full equality for women, with a distinctively Welsh political agenda, and constructions of Welsh national identity. These constructions sometimes included a positive view of women in the nation, but in times of political crisis redefined gender on a more reactionary model.

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"The Welsh in Iowa" is the history of the little known Welsh immigrant communities in the American Midwestern state of Iowa. Dr. Walley's book identifies what made the Welsh unique as immigrants to North America, and as migrants and settlers in a land built on such groups. With research rooted in documentary evidence and supplemented with community and oral histories, "The Welsh in Iowa" preserves and examines Welsh culture as it was expressed in middle America by the farmers and coal miners who settled or passed through the prairie state as it grew to maturity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This work seeks to not only document the Welsh immigrants who lived in Iowa, but to study the Welsh as a distinct ethnic group in a state known for its ethnic heritage.

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A study of the early modern period, from the creation of Monmouthshire by the Act of Union in 1536 to the beginnings of industrialization in the later eighteenth century. It explores the social concerns of this period, including the growth of urbanity and the commercial world, education, poverty and civil war, as well as religion and politics.

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A comprehensive study of the work of Lewis Edwards (1809-87), Wales's foremost scholar of the nineteenth century, and one who raised the standard of Nonconformist Wales erudition. A Calvinistic Methodist in his upbringing and through conviction, he was a pious man belonging to his era.

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First printed in 2001 by the University of Pennsylvania Press, this book has been out of print for several years and is highly sought after by researchers in the field of Medieval cultural studies. "Double Agents" was the first book length study of women in Anglo-Saxon written culture that took on board the insights of contemporary critical theory, especially feminist theory, in order to elucidate the complex challenges of both the absence and presence of women in the historical record. That is to say, unlike the two earlier books on women in this period (by Fell, 1984, and by Chance, 1986), this is not a book about only those women in the written record (whether we think of it as historical or literary) of Anglo-Saxon England, it also tackles the question of how the feminine is modelled, used, and metaphorised in Anglo-Saxon texts, even when women themselves are absent.This book spans the entire Anglo-Saxon period from Aldhelm and Bede in the earliest centuries to Alfric and the anonymous homilists and hagiographers of the later tenth and eleventh centuries; it draws on Anglo-Saxon vernacular texts as well as Latin ones, and on those works most familiar to literary scholars (such as the "Exeter Book Riddles" or "Cadmon's Hymn", the first so-called poem in English, or the female "Lives of Saints") as well as historians (wills, charters, the cult of relics); it deliberately reconsiders, from the perspective of gender and women's agency, some of the key conceptual issues that studying Anglo-Saxon England presents (the relation of orality to literacy; that of poetry and sanctity to belief; and, the cultural significance of names, naming, and metaphors in Anglo-Saxon writing).

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The purpose of the book is to give visitors to the medieval castles of Wales a concise but informative description of the main publicly accessible sites in a convenient format. An introductory chapter outlines the development of castle architecture in Britain, drawing on Welsh examples, with a number of 'box features' that elaborate more fully on particular aspects, such as gatehouses, or key personalities such as Llywelyn Fawr. Five chapters form a regionally based gazetteer of the castles described. Each entry is prefaced with a key to arrangements at each castle, such as whether there is an entry charge. The know history of any given site is then summarized, and this is then followed by the core of each entry, namely the description of the visible remains, to enable visitors to navigate their way around. Some of the descriptions of the larger sites are accompanied by plans. A final chapter provides a brief overview of castle-like buildings dating from the seventeenth century onwards, and this is followed by a guide to further reading.

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This book responds to the current critical interest in phantoms and haunting. It explores and assesses the twentieth century's fascination with the ghost in relation to notions of identity, authorship and memory, tracing the changing form of the ghost in key twentieth-century French media: film, photography, literature and theory. However, the ghosts of works present cannot be understood fully without considering the ghosts of works past. Each of the twentieth-century works analyzed considers itself haunted by the past, by memory, be it personal or textual. Consequently, this volume also considers this past and these textual memories by exploring specific ghosts in successive ages (Medieval, Renaissance, Early-Modern and the nineteenth century) and genres key to these epochs (poetry, drama and the novel).Thus, this collection offers an insight into the ghost's past, its evolution across time and genre, before turning to focus on how art in twentieth-century France deals with its textual memories and the ghosts of its past. A substantial introduction explains and pulls together the themes and analytical structure of this volume to provide unity and cohesion among the various chapters.

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The study of borders has recently undergone significant transitions, reflecting changes in the functions of boundaries themselves, as the world political map has experienced transformations. Gender (defined as the knowledge about perceived distinctions between the sexes) is an important signifier of borders as constructed and contested lines of differences. In the interplay with other categories of difference like class, race, ethnicity, and religion, it plays a major role in giving meaning to different forms of borders. It is not surprising, then, that an increasing number of studies in the last years have aimed for a gendering of border studies. This book explores this new interdisciplinary field and develops it further. The main questions it asks are: How do we define 'borders', 'frontiers' and 'boundaries' in different disciplinary approaches of gendered border studies? What were and are the main fields of gendered border studies in different fields? What might be important questions for future research? And how useful is an inter- or transdisciplinary approach for gendered border studies? Sixteen established scholars from various disciplines contribute chapters in which they set out how the issue of gender and borders has been approached in their discipline and describe what they expect from future research.

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Offers an account of the origins and development of Cardiff's, and Wales', medical school during the first four decades of its existence. This book focuses on the history of medical education in the United Kingdom, and also on the history of the University of Wales and its uneasy relationship with the Cardiff College.

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FfugLen is the Welsh word for fiction but is also a play on the words 'ffug' (meaning fake or false) and 'len' (the prepositive of 'llenyddiaeth' or literature) implying that these images are often ambiguous. This title presents a study of the image of Wales and the Welsh in twentieth-century Welsh-language literature. A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via the OAPEN Library platform. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project.

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This volume is based on the research of DR W. Gareth Evans into state secondary schools in Wales from 1896-2000. At the time of his death in 2000, he had covered the period of 1896 to 1970. This is an original, comprehensive study of the history of external examinations in the schools of Wales during the twentieth century, based on documents that have never previously been analysed. The aim of the book is to demonstrate how the present system of external examinations has developed in Wales over the last century and illustrates the inherent difficulty of making judgments about standards in schools, past and present.

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This book is one of the first English-language studies to chart the development of crime fiction in French from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. It analyses the distinctive features of a French-language tradition and introduces readers to a rich and varied body of work. Each chapter examines a specific period, movement or group of writers, as well as engaging with wider debates on the place of crime fiction within contemporary French and European culture. From early twentieth-century pioneers, such as Gaston Leroux and Maurice Leblanc, to the phenomenal success of Georges Simenon, from May 68 to the gender politics of crime fiction and postmodern reinventions, this collection approaches crime fiction in an interdisciplinary manner, alive to the innovative and often critically informed perspective it provides on French society and culture. The book also includes short extracts in English translation and an extensive bibliography of critical material for further reading. Such resources are aimed at encouraging the reader to gain a greater appreciation and understanding of this potent and formidable narrative of modern times.

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Reputation of Louis Aragon (1897-1982) is built upon his activities during the Second World War when his poetry embodied the spirit of the French Resistance. This book goes beyond the figure of the Resistance poet to explore the significance of the subject of war throughout his career.

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Offers guidance to the French vocabulary as it is found in the contemporary press and media. This book provides short examples for each word or phrase in context with English-translations of head-words. It includes words relating to semi-specialised areas such as the legal sphere, banking and finance, administration, commerce and politics.

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This collection of essays explores the thesis that Shakespeare as we know him today was born in the eighteenth century, at the same time as the Gothic tradition, first named by Horace Walpole in 1764. The two are inextricable. Writers interested in pursuing 'Gothic' themes and forms (the supernatural events and generic hybrids decried by French neoclassicism) justified their aesthetic choices as following the example of their great - and emphatically English - precursor. They cited him in their epigraphs and appropriated his narratives. They echoed his language and imitated his dramatic devices. Like Shakespeare, they explored the ways in which familial ghosts may haunt the present. Like him, they mixed modes and genres: tragedy and comedy, verse and prose. Together, critics of Shakespeare and creators of the Gothic (often one and the same author) not only canonized England's secular saint and created a new literary mode; they collectively initiated a mode of subjectivity that remains with us today in both high and popular culture.

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This collection of essays explores the thesis that Shakespeare as we know him today was born in the eighteenth century, at the same time as the Gothic tradition, first named by Horace Walpole in 1764. The two are inextricable. Writers interested in pursuing 'Gothic' themes and forms (the supernatural events and generic hybrids decried by French neoclassicism) justified their aesthetic choices as following the example of their great - and emphatically English - precursor. They cited him in their epigraphs and appropriated his narratives. They echoed his language and imitated his dramatic devices. Like Shakespeare, they explored the ways in which familial ghosts may haunt the present. Like him, they mixed modes and genres: tragedy and comedy, verse and prose. Together, critics of Shakespeare and creators of the Gothic (often one and the same author) not only canonized England's secular saint and created a new literary mode; they collectively initiated a mode of subjectivity that remains with us today in both high and popular culture.

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Examines the impact of devolution on civil society during the Assembly's first term with a particular focus on civil society's contribution to enhancing democracy and the interrelationship between civil society and national identity. This work contributes to bridge the gap between theory and empirically-grounded research on civil society.

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English author and philosopher, Bishop Thomas Burgess' career was concerned with advocating for the emancipation of slaves and evangelistic work among the poor. This book uses his life as a starting point to uncover the links between the academic, religious and social cultures of Britain, Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th centuries.

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Discusses the aesthetic in the context of the politics of marginal communities. This involves the comparison of articles written by Welsh author and poet, Twm Morys, and two Czech authors, Bouhmil Hrabal and Vaclav Havel.

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Offers a collection of articles from young academics who delivered papers to a seminar, entitled Llenyddiaeth Mewn Theori held at the University of Wales Lampeter in April 2005. This volume presents an assessment of Welsh literature from many historical periods and highlights the political questions of modern Wales.

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This book is unique in its focus and coverage, because no titles have been published on the subject in recent years, despite the increased interest in questions of religious truth as witnessed by the increasing number of articles in relevant journals. It analyzes liberal religious education in multi-cultural societies and suggests ways in which religious education can help young people learn to take responsibility for their beliefs and life-styles in an informed, intelligent and responsible manner. Traditional religious education in Europe and America and its transmission of Christian beliefs has been transformed by the emergence of multi-cultural societies into a process whereby children were informed about different religious traditions. The primary task of this new liberal religious education was often seen to be the moral one of nurturing the twin liberal principles of freedom and tolerance. Critics of liberal religious education argue that this ignores questions of ultimate truth that are at the core of religious belief: this book seeks to reconcile the often contradictory accounts offered by different religions and secular traditions.

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Defining the American gothic tradition both within the context of the major movements of intellectual history over the past three-hundred years, as well as within the issues critical to American culture, this comprehensive volume covers a diverse terrain of well-known American writers, from Poe to Faulkner to Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy. Charles L. Crow demonstrates how the gothic provides a forum for discussing key issues of changing American culture, explores forbidden subjects, and provides a voice for the repressed and silenced.

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Examines Welsh writing in English in the context of critical debates concerning the rise of cultural nationalism and the 'invention' of Great Britain as a nation in the eighteenth century. This study investigates the ways in which Anglophone literature from and about Wales imagines the nation and its culture in a range of genres

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An innovative and best-selling addition to contemporary peninsular literature, crime fiction by Spanish women re-writes the norms for this particular genre as established by male authors inside Spain, and revises and re-fashions paradigms for the detective novel produced by female Anglophone writers. In the first of three chapters, the author shows how the figure of the female sleuth has been deployed by novelists to articulate a feminist ideology or to reflect on the contemporary Spanish post-feminist environment. With reference to gendered criminology, she then moves on to discuss how writers use crime fiction to investigate the problem of gendered violence, and women's responses to it. A final section shows how, in Catalonia, female authors have used both the thriller and the 'cosy' enigma-style detective text to foreground and interrogate the parallel exploitation of women and the Catalan nation.

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This book examines the cultural policy of the Catalan Autonomous Government under the leadership of Jordi Pujol and his party, Convergencia i Unio, which were in power from the post-Franco transitional period of 1980 to Pujol's retirement in 2003. Examining issues of national identity and cultural nationalism in the context of globalization, multiculturalism and the commodification of culture, the book looks at how Pujol's government attempted to tackle these challenges.

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Bringing together the contributions of the most influential philosophers in the English-speaking world, this book deals with the contemporary debates about identity formation, multi-culturalism, and diversity. It explores the pacifying role of democratic law-making as a possible solution to the issues of diversity, justice and solidarity.

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Brittany presents a paradox: the region was incorporated into France in 1532, and has never known a substantial nationalist movement. Yet, in recent years, signs of a sense of separation from France are growing clearer. This paradox raises some fundamental questions about the processes of nation formation. This work provides an introduction to identity politics in Brittany, analysing its special status within France: the region forms at once a western border and a potential rival centre to Paris. These themes are explored through a discussion of representations of Brittany: in published forms, such as in literature, in political debates, but also in popular forms such as through religious pardons, through republican festivals and through popular protest.

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Religious diversity, religious enthusiasm, and religious misunderstanding remain at the heart of so much social, economic and political conflict in the world today. Never before has religious education been so important. In this climate, religious educators have become increasingly aware of the significance of listening to the religious perceptions of adolescents, using the best research techniques pioneered by the empirical social sciences, including sociology, psychology, and anthropology. This collection of innovative and pioneering empirical studies, sponsored by the International Seminar of Religious Education and Values, draws together Christian, Islamic, and Jewish perspectives from England, Germany, Israel, Norway, Turkey and Wales.

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Presents a comparative study of fiction by late twentieth and twenty-first century women writers from Ireland, Northern Ireland and Wales. This work is of interest to students interested in women's studies, gender studies, and cultural studies as well as Welsh, Irish and Celtic studies.

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Williams analyses and compares the ways in which African Americans and the Welsh have defined themselves as minorities within larger nation states (the UK and US). The study is grounded in examples of actual friendships and cultural exchanges between African Americans and the Welsh, such as Paul Robeson's connections with the socialists of the Welsh mining communities, and novelist Ralph Ellison's stories about his experiences as a GI stationed in wartime Swansea. This wide ranging book draws on literary, historical, visual and musical sources to open up new avenues of research in Welsh and African American studies.

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Richard Rorty is among the most cited, influential and notorious of recent philosophers. This book seeks to take Rorty seriously as a social and political philosopher, and to argue that his work is not as flippant, as frothy, or as easily dismissed as his opponents often tend to portray it.

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The majority of historians have viewed Lloyd George's early career to 1896 as superficial and merely the precursor to his successes at Westminster. Emyr Price provides an altogether different view. Based on original research he asserts that Lloyd George had a very strong commitment to Home Rule (and was the first modern Welsh nationalist), official status for the Welsh language and strong labour legislation and that he campaigned fearlessly against the tide (especially within his own party) to being these measures about. His decision to become a careerist politician after 1896 was the only way he could further the cause of Welsh 'national movement'. Price also investigates Lloyd George's 'Welsh' perception of the major issues that dominated his period of power at Westminster (1908-1922) including Ireland and how these Welsh and Celtic values determined his actions.

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A biography of Lewis Morris, map-maker, duty collector and mineworks supervisor who was one of the foremost literary figures of 18th century Wales.

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"Lazamon's Brut" is a twelfth-century historical poem that includes the first account of King Arthur in English, as an alternative to Norman accounts of English history. This is the study of the period to put Anglo-Norman and Angevin historiography in the context of colonialist and post-colonialist translation theory.

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A collection of essays that uses questions, hypotheses and concepts drawn from postcolonial theory to understand the culture and politics of post-devolution Wales. Beginning with discussions of how Wales as a nation has been understood historiographically, as well as historically, the book focuses in the next section on society and politics in post-devolution Wales. The final section of the volume considers Welsh cultural difference in terms of literature, the mass media, music, drama and the visual arts. Flexible in approach and diverse in their approaches, each contribution aims to stimulate ideas and suggest new ways of thinking about contemporary Wales.

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A critical study of the role of the Welsh theatre in the Welsh language, 1979-1997, with specific reference to how Welsh identity and nationhood is reflected in the experimental work of vigorous drama companies throughout Wales. 8 black-and-white photographs.

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This new and unusual Pocket Guide refers to more than 300 Welsh graves of the famous and not so famous. They are grouped in convenient geographical areas using the current local government boundaries and there is guidance on how to find the graves themselves. The book is not so much about the graves themselves (although where they are particularly notable there are photographs and descriptions) but about the people buried in them. It thus provides potted biographies of the individuals involved and offers some intriguing juxtapositions. So we find the fairly respectable Cynan and Sir John Edward Lloyd buried close to the seriously eccentric John Evans (Bardd Cocos) at Menai Bridge, Joe Erskine close to Arwel Hughes at Thornhill, while Trealaw would be worth visiting to see the graves of Viscount Tonypandy, Tommy Farr, Lewis Jones and Kitchener Davies as well as that of Williams Evans, owner of the Corona pop factory.

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