Welsh Identity In The C18th Essay Research — страница 2

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issues involved in the Welsh revival without first discussing the great strides that were made in the area of Welsh language. As previously stated, the Welsh language was suffering a decline at the start of the eighteenth century. With the Anglicisation of the gentry, the native language was increasingly looked at with disdain. Indeed, at the end of the seventeenth century Welsh seemed to be going the way of Cornish and Manx. However, Welsh is still in use today. One of the contributing factors to the proliferation of the Welsh language in this time of turmoil wast the expiration of the 1662 Licensing Act in 1695. With the establishment of printing presses in Wales, first in Trerhedyn in 1718, then in Carmarthen in 1721, the printing of Welsh books and pamphlets became much

easier. Before this time, books had to be sent to London for publishing which invariably led to numerous misprints. Some of the first people to take advantage of the new publishing freedon were members of the religious community. Pamphlets, hymn books, and Bibles were printed and distributed by Anglican and Dissenter alike. The religious community set about furiously translating the most popular religious texts into Welsh as well as creating new texts. It would be the religious community that would bring education and literacy to the masses as well. While the Welsh Trust and the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) made great strides in educating the common children in English and distributing Bibles, it was the Circulating Schools of Griffith Jones that had

the greatest impact on the Welsh revival. In the thirty years between establishing his first school in Llanddowror, Carmarthenshire, in 1731 and his death in 1761, Jones established 3,325 schools reaching approximately 250,000 pupils. He was the first to realize the importance of teaching literacy thruogh the medium of Welsh. Jones goal was to save souls. Little did he know, his charity schools would help breathe life-blood into a cold and dieing language. As the number of literate people increased the demand for printed material increased as well. The amount of books printed in Welsh tripled from 1660-1700, the tripled again from 1700-1740. The bulk of these printed works consisted of religious matirial and works that had been translated from English. Some of these works, like

Paul-Yves Pezron s L Antiquite de la Nation et la Langue des Celtes first translated from French to English, would have a tremendous effect in the shaping of the new Welsh indentity. This is not to say that works were not being written in Welsh. In 1716, Theophilus Evans first published Drych y Prif Oesedd (A Mirror of the First Ages), sparked by the Celtomania that Pezron had begun. There were also a number of grammars and dictionaries printed in this period, possibly the most scholarly of these being Edward Lhuyd s Archaeologia Britannica which contained information on Breton, Cornish and Welsh language. Other dictionaries and grammers were to follow. Indeed, lexicography became a hobby for the cultural elite, especially among the Morris Circle, inspired by the earlier works of

Lhuyd and John Davies. One such scholar was John Walthers who, with the help of a young Iolo Morganwg, published his English-Welsh Dictionary, in fourteen volumes, from 1770-1783. Seeing the need for the language to evolve, Welsh scholars began to create new words and, in some cases, change grammar rules. This free-for-all of change and invention would spread to other forms of scholarship. The subsequent culture of invention would change the face of Wales forever. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Welsh people were facing a crisis of history. In shory, Wales had no immediate history unique unto itself. This led Welsh historians to look to the ancient past. Every Welsh scholar was well versed in the works of Gildas, Taliesin, Nennius, and of course Geoffrey of Monmouth. Although

scholars were beginning to discredit Geoffrey, the Welsh need for identity and the tidal wave of Romanticism proved more than legitimate history could bear. Theophilus Evans Drych y Prif Oesoedd, in which he combined and eloborated on previous histories, was built on Geoffrey s model. Most Welshmen were already familiar with the rich lineage of the Welsh princes. With a role call including Belli Mawr, Brutus, Cunedda, Maximius, Arthur, and ultimately Llywelyn II, the Welsh people were far from lacking when it came to cultural heroes. Owain Glyn Dwr s death had marked the last of the great Welsh heroes. A people deeply ingrained in the mythology of the land, the Welsh needed more to take hold of as new advances in scholarship quickly tore apart the accepted history. Ironically,