This book offers a collection of new studies on the chronicles of medieval Wales and the March, supported by synoptic pieces placing the tradition of chronicle writing in Wales within the context of historical writing on a broader scale. The volume is accompanied by five editions and translations of little-known texts written in Latin and Medieval Welsh.
The chronicles of medieval Wales are a rich body of source material offering an array of perspectives on historical developments in Wales and beyond. Preserving unique records of events from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, these chronicles form the essential narrative backbone of all modern accounts of medieval Welsh history. Most celebrated of all are the chronicles belonging to the Annales Cambriae and Brut y Tywysogyon families, which document the tumultuous struggles between the Welsh princes and their Norman and English neighbours for control over Wales.
Building on foundational studies of these chronicles by J. E. Lloyd, Thomas Jones, Kathleen Hughes, and others, this book seeks to enhance understanding of the texts by refining and complicating the ways in which they should be read as deliberate literary and historical productions. The studies in this volume make significant advances in this direction through fresh analyses of well-known texts, as well as through full studies, editions, and translations of five chronicles that had hitherto escaped notice.
Dr Ben Guy is a Junior Research Fellow at Robinson College, University of Cambridge.
Dr Georgia Henley is an Assistant Professor of English at Saint Anselm College.
Dr Owain Wyn Jones is a Lecturer in History at Bangor University.
Dr Rebecca Thomas is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Bangor University.
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Preface
Chronicling and its Contexts in Medieval Wales — HUW PRYCE
Historical Writing in Europe, c. 1100–1300 — BJÖRN WEILER
Historical Scholars and Dishonest Charlatans: Studying the Chronicles of Medieval Wales — BEN GUY
Meet the Ancestors? Evidence for Antecedent Texts in the Late Thirteenth-Century Welsh Latin Chronicles — HENRY GOUGH-COOPER
Bonedd y Saint,
Brenhinedd y Saesson, and Historical Scholarship at Valle Crucis Abbey — BARRY J. LEWIS
The Continuation of Brut y Tywysogyon in NLW, Peniarth MS 20 Re-visited — DAVID STEPHENSON
O Oes Gwrtheyrn: A Medieval Welsh Chronicle — OWAIN WYN JONES
The Cardiff Chronicle in London, British Library, MS Royal 6 B XI — GEORGIA HENLEY
The Chronicle of Gregory of Caerwent — JOSHUA BYRON SMITH
A Forgotten Welsh Chronology in Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MSS 5267B, Peniarth 50, and the Red Book of Hergest — REBECCA TRY *
Brut Ieuan Brechfa: A Welsh Poet Writes the Early Middle Ages — BEN GUY
Appendix: List of the Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March