Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- General Editor's Foreword
- Introduction
- I Arthur of the Irish: A Viable Concept?
- II Performing Culhwch ac Olwen
- III Court and Cyuoeth: Chrétien de Troyes' Erec et Enide and the Middle Welsh Gereint
- IV Owein, Ystorya Bown, and the Problem of ‘Relative Distance’: Some Methodological Considerations and Speculations
- V Neither Flesh nor Fowl: Merlin as Bird-Man in Breton Folk Tradition
- VI Narratives and Non-Narratives: Aspects of Welsh Arthurian Tradition
- CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUMES
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- General Editor's Foreword
- Introduction
- I Arthur of the Irish: A Viable Concept?
- II Performing Culhwch ac Olwen
- III Court and Cyuoeth: Chrétien de Troyes' Erec et Enide and the Middle Welsh Gereint
- IV Owein, Ystorya Bown, and the Problem of ‘Relative Distance’: Some Methodological Considerations and Speculations
- V Neither Flesh nor Fowl: Merlin as Bird-Man in Breton Folk Tradition
- VI Narratives and Non-Narratives: Aspects of Welsh Arthurian Tradition
- CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUMES
Summary
This volume of Arthurian Literature is devoted to what is often loosely and inaccurately described as ‘Celtic material’. This encompasses texts composed in one or other of the Celtic languages, or tales preserved or reflected in written or oral traditions in the countries where a Celtic language is spoken, and includes material originally composed elsewhere but translated or adapted into one or more Celtic languages. Within the study of Arthurian literature this area has been the subject of considerable controversy since the nineteenth century. Recent decades have seen the publication of a constant stream of popular works purporting to ‘identify’ the ‘real’ King Arthur or locate the sites of his battles with precision. The fashion for New Age philosophies and ‘Celtic Spirituality’ has likewise led to a substantial increase in the general public's interest in these sources, not least those in Welsh or from Wales and those relating to the grail traditions. Even amongst scholars of medieval languages and literatures, debates about the origins and interpretation of the story material they relate or reflect have at times been heated, often seemingly driven as much by emotion as by rational argument or firm evidence. That hardy perennial, the so-called Mabinogion-frage, focusing on the question of the relationship between the three Welsh tales of Peredur, Owain and Geraint on the one hand and the corresponding three romances by Chrétien de Troyes on the other, has perhaps generated more heat and certainly more words than any other topic within this field during the last hundred years and more.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Arthurian Literature XXICeltic Arthurian Material, pp. 1 - 8Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004