Medieval Latin Literature - Literary Criticism, Manuscripts - General & Miscellaneous

Cambro-Latin Compositions : Their Competence and Craftsmanship

Name: Cambro-Latin Compositions : Their Competence and Craftsmanship
Author: David Howlett
ISBN: 9781851823970

by David Howlett

Available on Bookshop Write a review

Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.

Overview

Howlett charts a tradition of high craftsmanship from the fifth to the thirteenth, from the Romano-British writers Pelagius, Saint Patrick, and Faustus of Riez through a series of prose and verse inscriptions on stone to Gildas, Moucan, the author of the 'Historia Brittonum', the source of the Arthurian legend, Asser, the teacher and biographer of Alfred the Great, the hagiographers Rhygyfarch ap Sulien of Llanbadarn Fawr, Lifris and Caradog of Llancarfan, and finally to Geoffrey of Mon-mouth and Gerald of Wales, who presented Welsh traditions of Patrick, David, Arthur, and Merlin, of storytelling and music, to a wider European audience.

The sophistication of this literature proves that the Welsh never endured a 'Dark Age', maintaining Latin culture throughout the period in which it was lost elsewhere. The encoded signatures, in fixed dates, invective, wit, word play, and architectonic brilliance reveal the Welsh in two aspects, as unique transmitters of a tradition of Latin unbroken from Roman times to the present, and as tutors who laid foundations for the most spectacular literary achievements of their neighbours in Irish, English, and French.