The Poets of the Welsh Princes

This text deals principally with the professional poets employed in the courts of the Welsh princes during the 12th and 13th centuries. Some 31 of these poets are known by name and the work of several of them has survived. It is difficult to generalize about the poets of the Welsh princes - some being epic-minded and others more concerned with the spirit; some poems have a social connotation, others a personal. They were traditionalists in the type of poems they wrote, their poems have an added importance because of their value as records of geneology. The author places these poets in their historical setting, telling something of their poetic predecessors and also of the prose writers of the same era, and links this period of national awakening with the 12th centurey renaissance in Western Europe. this is a revised and expanded edition of a book first published as a limited numbered edition.