Studies on Middle Welsh Literature

Vernacular prose, both as medium for record and instruction and as means of entertainment, appears in a written form at an early period of Welsh literary history. It was an amalgam of native features with sources and analogues in traditional Celtic literature, and of borrowings and influences from the broader stream of European culture -- Old French epics and chanson de geste texts, as well as Latin literature. This collection of essays look at ways in which the so-called native tales, now called mabinogion, have become literary stories.