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2 books match the query 'Welsh language'
Introduction to Middle Welsh
Joshua Byron Smith
Catholic University of America Press, 2026
Introduction to Middle Welsh offers a comprehensive introduction to Middle Welsh grammar, leading the student through sixty chapters of carefully scaffolded exercises and readings. Written in an engaging style and aimed toward learners without any knowledge of Modern Welsh, this book guides students to a high intermediate level of proficiency with the language, focusing particularly on prose.
The first twenty chapters employ both original Middle Welsh sentences and simplified sentences based on originals, allowing learners to master basic grammatical concepts without being overwhelmed by vocabulary. New vocabulary is introduced at the end of each lesson, so that learners can complete the exercises and translation without looking up words in the glossary. The glossary, for its part, contains over 1,500 vocabulary items, which provides students with many of the most commonly used words in Middle Welsh literature. When available, useful etymologies are also provided, making connections to languages that students might already know. In addition to several hundred carefully chosen sentences for translation exercises, Introduction to Middle Welsh includes eighteen selections from literature, ranging from poetry to law, showing the variety of the Middle Welsh literary corpus.
Ideal for the classroom or self-taught learners, Introduction to Middle Welsh will appeal to those with an interest in Welsh, medieval literature, and Celtic studies.
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Reading Ovid in Medieval Wales
Paul Russell
The Ohio State University Press, 2017
Reading Ovid in Medieval Wales provides the first complete edition and discussion of the earliest surviving fragment of Ovid’s Ars amatoria, or The Art of Love, which derives from ninth-century Wales; the manuscript, which is preserved in Oxford, is heavily glossed mainly in Latin but also in Old Welsh. This study, by Classical and Celtic scholar Paul Russell, discusses the significance of the manuscript for classical studies and how it was absorbed into the classical Ovidian tradition. This volume’s main focus, however, is on the glossing and commentary and what these can teach us about the pedagogical approaches to Ovid’s text in medieval Europe and Britain and, more specifically, in Wales.
Russell argues that this annotated version of the Ars amatoria arose out of the teaching traditions of the Carolingian world and that the annotation, as we have it, was the product of a cumulative process of glossing and commenting on the text. He then surveys other glossed Ovid manuscripts to demonstrate how that accumulation was built up. Russell also explores the fascinating issue of why Ovid’s love poetry should be used to teach Latin verse in monastic contexts. Finally, he discusses the connection between this manuscript and the numerous references to Ovid in later Welsh poetry, suggesting that the Ovidian references should perhaps be taken to refer to love poetry more generically.
Russell argues that this annotated version of the Ars amatoria arose out of the teaching traditions of the Carolingian world and that the annotation, as we have it, was the product of a cumulative process of glossing and commenting on the text. He then surveys other glossed Ovid manuscripts to demonstrate how that accumulation was built up. Russell also explores the fascinating issue of why Ovid’s love poetry should be used to teach Latin verse in monastic contexts. Finally, he discusses the connection between this manuscript and the numerous references to Ovid in later Welsh poetry, suggesting that the Ovidian references should perhaps be taken to refer to love poetry more generically.
[more]