William Browne and the writing of early Stuart Wales

Mottram, Stewart

Abstract

A shared ethnic crisis has produced dramatically antithetical solutions, and whereas the myth-making of Pugh and Evans is in essence no more than an effort to salvage the myth-symbol complex of the Welsh past, Morgan Llwyd's work seeks to fashion that discredited, superannuated complex into a radically new shape, suitable for his ethnie's future. Consequently, in the struggle for ownership of the proverbs between the Anglican Raven and the Puritan Eagle we see enacted Morgan Llwyd's struggle with the established church for ownership of the Welsh language, no less and Welsh was, of course, the constitutive language of the ethnie itself at this time. The notion of the Welsh as a Chosen People, a concept close to the heart of nineteenth-century Welsh Nonconformity, is firmly promoted by Morgan Llwyd and other Welsh Puritans. Morgan Llwyd thus conceives of the company of the godly as a whole democratic society of spiritual aristocrats and that's the key.

Citation

Mottram, S. (2012). William Browne and the writing of early Stuart Wales. In S. Mottram, & S. Prescott (Eds.), Writing Wales, from the Renaissance to Romanticism (91-107). Farnham: Ashgate. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315546131

• Acceptance Date: Nov 1, 2012
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2012
• Publisher: Ashgate
• Pages: 91-107
• Book Title: Writing Wales, from the Renaissance to Romanticism
• Chapter Number: 5
• ISBN: 9781409445098
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315546131
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/423639