Arthurian Romance - ENGL 370 Resource Guide: Welsh Tradition

A collection of 11 Welsh prose tales, by various unknown authors, preserved in The White Book of Rhydderch and The Red Book of Hergest. Although conserved in a literary form, they embody certain stylistic features which prove that their raw material originated in the oral tradition of the storytellers (see Cyfarwydd) of the Middle Ages.

Eleven prose tales set in Britain at various times between 500 B.C.E. and 1200 C.E.; written in Welsh in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; published in English in 1849.

Mabinogion, The“Pwyll, Prince of Dyved.” Pwyll, the prince of Dyved, is caught stealing a dying deer. In order to redeem himself, Pwyll agrees to exchange lands and appearances with the chieftain who has caught him and to slay the chieftain’s enemy after a year’s time. During that year, each prince rules the other’s land wisely and well, and each remains faithful to his own true wife.

Re-analyzing Arthur's depiction in 'Culhwch and Olwen', this article concentrates on how the structure given to previously disparate traditions creates a coherent picture of Arthur and promotes him as an overking. Article in JSTOR

Cerys Matthews tells the story of one of the great literary treasures of the medieval world - The Mabinogion. Its ancient tales, once recited aloud by storytellers, were later translated from Welsh by a Victorian enthusiast, Lady Charlotte Guest.

Destined by a spell, cast by his stepmother, to love only Olwen, Culhwch begins his quest to seek her hand, but the road to marriage is paved with seemingly insurmountable obstacles set by her father, the evil giant, Ysbaddaden. Thus begins one of the loveliest of the Tales of the Mabinogion, some manuscripts of which are at least 700 years old.

Segment on King Arthur