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'Go and Look in the Latin Books': Latin and the Vernacular in Medieval Wales

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Book chapter

Change log

Authors

Abstract

The Latin of medieval Wales has, it might be argued, been marginal to the concerns of the DMLBS in a number of respects. Geographically throughout the period with which the dictionary is concerned, Wales was marginal to the concerns of most of the historians, chroniclers, bureaucrats, poets, et al., from whose writings the data for the dictionary has been drawn. Lexicographically too the Latin of medieval Wales has sat rather uncomfortably between two stools. Very early in the process it was agreed that data from Latin texts in Wales from before 1200 would be taken into the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from Celtic Sources, a project under the auspices of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin, though the details are vague as to which texts precisely would be taken over: ‘in view of the project launched by the Royal Irish Academy for a Dictionary of Insular Celtic Latin, most Irish sources prior to 1200, and some Welsh sources, have been excluded (sc. from the DMLBS).’ However, it is clear that many of the relevant writers have been included, such as Gildas, ‘Nennius’, Asser, Rhigyfarch, Ieuan, Caradog, Geoffrey, and especially those who straddled the 1200 watershed, such as Gerald of Wales and Walter Map, who at least wrote about Wales even if they were not writing in Wales.

Description

Title

'Go and Look in the Latin Books': Latin and the Vernacular in Medieval Wales

Keywords

Welsh literature, Latin language literature, 400-1499 Medieval period, prose, chronicle, legal prose, 1197-1250, bilingualism, vernacular language

Is Part Of

Latin in Medieval Britain

Book type

Publisher

Oxford University Press

ISBN

9780197266083