Chair: Huw Pryce
This paper is based on a research project considering the adoption of Anglo-Norman culture in south east Wales between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, exploring how Welsh and Anglo-Norman cultures in south-east Wales – an area of particularly intense Anglo-Welsh contact – clashed, coexisted, and blended. South-east Wales is an area where studies of the native Welsh have been limited in comparison with studies of their Anglo-Norman counterparts, and the research hopes to explore this in more detail.
This paper will trace the careers of a number of prominent individuals from south-east Wales, using as sources chronicles, charters, pipe rolls, genealogies, and the writings of Gerald of Wales. These individuals – primarily local princes – include members of the most prominent families of Caerleon, Afan and Senghenydd. Through several case studies, the paper will introduce themes such as the attitude of these princes towards their neighbours, how they wished to be seen by their peers, and how far they became involved in the wider Anglo-Norman world beyond the confines of south-east Wales. Above all, the paper will consider what these themes reveal about cultural interaction in this region from the earliest Norman incursions until the period after the Edwardian Conquest.
Bwriad y papur hwn yw archwilio sut y mae Robert Jones Rhoslan - aelod amlwg o’r Methodistiaid Calfinaidd yng Nghymru - yn creu naratif o’r gorffennol yn ei lyfr hanes Drych yr Amseroedd (1820) i fynegi cof rhanbarthol i’r Fethodistiaid Calfinaidd yng ngogledd Cymru yn ei gyfnod. Cof sy’n pwysleisio arwyddocâd ac yn dyrchafu’i enwad ydyw gyda Christnogaeth yn chwarae rol flaenllaw. Dadl greiddiol y papur yw bod cof cenedlaethol a hanes cenedlaethol ill dau’n cyfrannu at hunaniaeth gyfunol yn y presennol. Gan dynnu ar waith Jan ac Aleida Assmann ar Gof Diwylliannol (1996), dengys fod yna berthynas agos rhwng cof cenedlaethol a naratif cenedlaethol o’r gorffennol (sef: hanes). Dadleuir y cyflwynir y gorffennol mewn ffordd sy’n mynnu perchnogaeth ohono, gan gynnig gwybodaeth am hunaniaeth i’r anghydffurfwyr newydd. Yn pontio rhwng cof cyfathrebol a chof traws-genedliadol, crea Robert Jones ei ddrych er mwyn adlewyrchu’i brofiad personol o dwf yr enwad i Fethodistiaid o’r drydedd a’r bedwaredd genhedlaeth. Cyfranna’r papur hwn at astudiaethau’r cof, maes byw a thraws-ddisgyblaethol bellach, ac yn benodol at ein dealltwriaeth o’r berthynas rhwng hanes a’r cof. Bydd hyn o ddiddordeb i’r rheini sy’n astudio hanes, hunaniaeth ranbarthol, a’r cof gan ddangos fod y berthynas rhwng y tri chysyniad yn un holistaidd.
This paper analyses how Robert Jones of Rhoslan (1745-1829) – a prominent member of the Calvinistic Methodist Church in Wales – creates a narrative of the recent past in his national history book Drych yr Amseroedd (1820). I argue that he attempts to create a national memory emphasising the centrality and brilliance of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists. One of my main theses will be that national history and national memory both contribute to collective identity in the present. Benefiting from Jan and Aleida Assmann’s concept of Cultural Memory (1996), this paper will show the close relationship between national memory and national narratives of the past: in other words, national history. I argue that Robert Jones attempts to reveal the past to the new Welsh Nonconformist nation in such a way that demands ownership of it by providing crucial information for an independent religious identity. Bridging the gap between communicative memory and transgenerational memory, Jones creates a mirror to reflect his lived experiences of the rise of this denomination to third- and fourth-generation Methodists. This paper will contribute to the lively and inter-disciplinary field of memory studies, especially our understanding of the relationship between history and memory. This will be of interest scholars of history, the nation and nationalism, and memory, arguing that a holistic relationship exists between the three concepts.
In Modern Welsh, the intensifier X hun(an) is also used as a reflexive pronoun. The same is true for the English intensifier X-self, which started to be used as a reflexive marker from the fifteenth century onwards. For a long time the Welsh marker has been discussed as the model of this use. This hypothesis implies, however, that the English intensifier acquired the reflexive function due to linguistic convergence with Brittonic or Welsh, where the same development took place earlier.
Recent research has disproved this latter assumption, however. An analysis by Irslinger (forthcoming) has shown that up to the year 1425 examples of reflexive X hun(an) are extremely rare. Thus the corpora Rhyddiaith y 13eg Ganrif and Rhyddiaith Gymraeg / Welsh Prose 1300-1425 contain only fourteen instances of reflexive X hun(an), some of which are even controversial.
The present paper will examine X hun(an) in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts, focussing on William Salesbury, Testament Newydd (1567), William Morgan, Beibl Cymraeg (1588) and Rhosier Smyth, Theater du Mond / Gorsedd y byd (1615). The instances of X hun(an) contained in these texts will be analysed according to their semantics, functions and frequency. Special attention will be paid to the increasing productivity of X hun(an) as a reflexive marker.