The poetic field, IV: Welsh

This chapter offers an overview of the Welsh poetic field as it intersects with the English in the centuries following the Edwardian conquest of 1282–3. From the early-fourteenth-century Harley lyrics, to English Arthuriana, and late-medieval Welsh and macaronic poetry, it explores the evidence for cross-cultural and cross-linguistic interaction, noting the mediating role of Latin and French material in the circulation of Welsh names and thematic content in English-language literary culture. It suggests that during this period we find the clearest evidence of the direct influence not of Welsh poetry on English but of English language and literature on Welsh, in the English vocabulary and apparent familiarity with the English popular lyric in the writings of Chaucer’s contemporary, Dafydd ap Gwilym, as well as in the English–Welsh macaronic dialogues of the fifteenth century and the writing of English poetry in Welsh orthography.