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Englynion
(; plural ) is a traditional Welsh and Cornish short poem form. It uses quantitative metres, involving the counting of syllables, and rigid patterns of rhyme and half rhyme. Each line contains a repeating pattern of consonants and accent known as . Early history The is found in the work of the earliest attested Welsh poets (the ), where the main types are the three-line and . It is the only set stanzaic metre found in the early Welsh poetic corpus, and explanations for its origins have tended to focus on stanzaic Latin poetry and hymns; however, it is as likely to be a development within the Brittonic poetic tradition. Whereas the metrical rules of later are clear (and are based on counting syllables), the precise metre of the early is debated and could have involved stress-counting. The earliest are found as marginalia written in a tenth-century hand in the Juvencus Manuscript. Many early form poems which seem to represent moments of characters' emotional reflection in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canu Llywarch Hen
''Canu Llywarch Hen'' (modern Welsh /'kani 'ɬəwarχ heːn/, the songs of Llywarch Hen) are a collection of early Welsh ''englyn''-poems. They comprise the most famous of the early Welsh cycles of ''englynion'' about heroes of post-Roman North Britain. Contents and themes As edited by Jenny Rowland, the contents of ''Canu Llywarch Hen'' are as follows: The poems contemplate martial, masculine culture, fate, and old age from a critical standpoint. As with the other so-called 'saga ''englynion''’ (pre-eminently ''Canu Urien'' and ''Canu Heledd''), there is considerable uncertainty and debate as to how the poems of ''Canu Llywarch'' might originally have been performed. It is usually assumed that they must have been accompanied by some kind of prose narrative, to which they provided emotional depth; but this is not certain. In all the independent witnesses bar NLW 4973a, the Llywarch Hen poems are preceded by the ''englyn''-poem ''Claf Abercuawg'', which in the White Book is e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Englynion Y Beddau
The ''Englynion y Beddau'' ( en, The Stanzas or Verses of the Graves) is a Middle Welsh verse catalogue listing the resting places (''beddau'') of legendary heroes. It consists of a series of ''englynion'', or short stanzas in quantitative meter, and survives in a number of manuscripts. The collection is thought to be considerably older than its earliest manuscript, the 13th-century Black Book of Carmarthen, and provides an important early glimpse at medieval Welsh heroic tradition and topographical folklore. Transmission The stanzas, or more specifically, englynion, are transmitted in four classes of medieval Welsh manuscripts and later transcripts. The earliest, best known and most reliable version of the text is the collection of 73 englynion preserved in the Black Book of Carmarthen.Jones, "Black Book," p. 98. The first 69 stanzas were copied in the first quarter of the 13th century, while the last four were added at a later stage, probably in the same century. Five further e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juvencus Manuscript
The Juvencus Manuscript (Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. 4.42; cy, Llawysgrif Juvencus) is one of the main surviving sources of Old Welsh. Unlike much Old Welsh, which is attested in manuscripts from later periods and in partially updated form, the Welsh material in the Juvencus Manuscript was written in the Old Welsh period itself; the manuscript provides the first attestation of many Welsh words. Around the second half of the ninth century, someone copied two Old Welsh poems into the margins: a nine-stanza ''englyn'' poem on the wonders of God's creation (generally known as the 'Juvencus nine'), and, on folios 25-26, a three-stanza poem which seems to represent a warrior lamenting his misfortunes (known as the 'Juvencus three'). These are the earliest surviving ''englynion''. The parts of the manuscript containing the 'Juvencus three' were cut out of the manuscript and stolen in the early eighteenth century by the antiquary Edward Lhuyd (1660-1709), but were found ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canu Heledd
''Canu Heledd'' (modern Welsh /'kani 'hɛlɛð/, the songs of Heledd) are a collection of early Welsh ''englyn''-poems. They are rare among medieval Welsh poems for being set in the mouth of a female character. One prominent figure in the poems is Heledd's dead brother Cynddylan. Summary Dorothy Ann Bray summarised the cycle thus: The entire cycle of the Heledd poems ... is a statement of mourning from which a background story has been deduced: Cynddylan, prince of Powys, and his brothers along with his heroic band are slain in battle, defending their country against the English in the mid-seventh century. Heledd, his sister, is one of the few survivors, who witnessed the battle and the destruction of Cynddylan's hall at Pengwern. She has lost not only all her brothers, but also her sisters and her home, and the poems suggest that she blames herself for the destruction of Cynddylan's court because of some ill-spoken words. As with the other so-called 'saga ''englynion''’ (p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claf Abercuawg
''Claf Abercuawg'' (IPA /klav ˌaber'ki:aug/, 'the leper of Abercuawg') is the modern title of a 32-stanza medieval Welsh ''englyn''-poem. According to Jenny Rowland, 'most critics would classify it among the most sophisticated and moving all the early ''englynion'' poems'; it is 'the classic example' of meditative, lyric, at least implicitly religious, early Welsh poetry. Content and style The poem gradually reveals itself as a monologue by a person who is ill, probably with leprosy, as he laments his exile from society and the ruin of his homestead. It is characterised by the use of the natural world as a frame and reference point for human emotion, shifts of focus from the speaker's observations on his particular situation and gnomic observations on life in general, and jumps from one subject to another producing tantalising juxtapositions. The poem has frequently been compared (and contrasted) with the roughly contemporaneous Old English poems '' The Wanderer'' and '' The Sea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kyntaw Geir
''Kyntaw geir'' (IPA /'kəntau gəir/, named for its first line, 'kyntaw geir a dywedaw', 'the first speech I will utter') is a medieval Welsh ''englyn''-poem. It is a relatively rare example of religious poetry in the ''englyn'' form. Contents and style In the assessment of Jenny Rowland, 'the narrator-persona displays very human foibles, including the attempt to deny them. This naturalism makes it tempting to view the poem as a personal lyric, but it is undoubtedly misleading. The slightly bumbling, overly sincere narrator of "Kintaw geir" has a shrewd observer of human nature behind him. The incredible impression of spontaneity also conceals art and very tight organization.' The poem opens with the pilgrim preparing himself for his journey and seeking God's protection, perhaps alluding to other journey prayers like the Old English '' Journey Charm''. However, his preparations are disturbed by a sneeze, which seems clearly to have been viewed as a bad omen. In stanzas 4-7 he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cynfeirdd
Medieval Welsh literature is the literature written in the Welsh language during the Middle Ages. This includes material starting from the 5th century AD, when Welsh was in the process of becoming distinct from Common Brittonic, and continuing to the works of the 16th century. The Welsh language became distinct from other dialects of Old British sometime between AD 400 and 700; the earliest surviving literature in Welsh is poetry dating from this period. The poetic tradition represented in the work of ''Y Cynfeirdd'' ("The Early Poets"), as they are known, then survives for over a thousand years to the work of the ''Poets of the Nobility'' in the 16th century. The core tradition was praise poetry; and the poet Taliesin was regarded as the first in the line. The other aspect of the tradition was the professionalism of the poets and their reliance on patronage from kings, princes and nobles for their living. The fall of the Kingdom of Gwynedd and the loss of Welsh independence in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robertson Davies
William Robertson Davies (28 August 1913 – 2 December 1995) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished " men of letters", a term Davies gladly accepted for himself. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate residential college associated with the University of Toronto. Biography Early life Davies was born in Thamesville, Ontario, the third son of William Rupert Davies and Florence Sheppard McKay. Growing up, Davies was surrounded by books and lively language. His father, senator of Kingston, Ontario, from 1942 to his death in 1967, was a newspaperman from Welshpool, Wales, and both parents were voracious readers. He followed in their footsteps and read everything he could. He also participated in theatrical productions as a child, where he developed a lifelong interest in drama. He spent his formative years in Renfrew, Ontario (and ren ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Literary Consonance
Consonance is a stylistic literary device identified by the repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighboring words whose vowel sounds are different (e.g. coming home, hot foot). Consonance may be regarded as the counterpart to the vowel-sound repetition known as assonance. Alliteration is a special case of consonance where the repeated consonant sound is at the stressed syllable, as in "few flocked to the fight" or "around the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran". Alliteration is usually distinguished from other types of consonance in poetic analysis, and has different uses and effects. Another special case of consonance is sibilance, the use of several |
Chain Rhyme
Chain rhyme is a rhyme scheme that links together of stanzas by carrying a rhyme over from one stanza to the next. A number of verse forms use chain rhyme as an integral part of their structures. One example is terza rima, which is written in tercets with a rhyming pattern ABA BCB CDC. Another is the virelai ancien, which rhymes AABAAB BBCBBC CCDCCD. Other verse forms may also use chain rhyme. For instance, quatrains can be written to the following pattern: AABA BBCB CCDC. There are a few well-known examples of chain rhyme in world literature. In the Persian language, chain rhyme is almost exclusively devoted to the poetic form of the Rubaiyat: a poem that makes use of quatrains with the rhyme scheme AABA. Though not necessarily chain rhyme, the Rubiyat form has been mimicked throughout the world. Robert Frost made use of Rubaiyat in chain rhyme form in his poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." Chain rhyme also known as “chain verse or interlocking rhyme" is a type of p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr
Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr ("Cynddelw the Great Poet"; wlm, Kyndelw Brydyt or ; 1155–1200), was the court poet of Madog ap Maredudd, Owain Gwynedd (Owen the Great), and Dafydd ab Owain Gwynedd, and one of the most prominent Welsh poets of the 12th century. Cynddelw began his career as court poet to Madog ap Maredudd, Prince of Powys. At Madog's death in 1160, Cynddelw wrote the following elegy: While Madog lived there was no man Dared ravage his fair borders Yet nought of all he held Esteemed he his save by God's might… If my noble lord were alive Gwynedd would not now be encamped in the heart of Edeyrnion. Cynddelw composed poems for a number of the later rulers of Powys, now divided into two parts, such as Owain Cyfeiliog and Gwenwynwyn. He also composed poems addressed to the rulers of Gwynedd and Deheubarth, and notably poems addressed to Owain Gwynedd and to his son Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd and later to Rhys ap Gruffudd of Deheubarth and to the young Llywelyn the Great. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |