Cornish LiteratureThis work places Cornish literature - the works of the medieval and Reformation periods and the smaller works of late Cornish, and indeed of the recent revival -into a British, Celtic and European literary context. The Cornish works are evaluated and compared with similar texts in a variety of languages, including medieval Latin, English, French, Breton and German. After an introduction to Cornish as such, full chapters are devoted to the poem of the Passion, to the great mystery cycle of the 'Ordinalia', to the very different later Creation drama, and to the impressive and quite wrongly neglected drama of Saint Meriasek, the sole surviving example in Britain of a non-biblical saint play on a large scale. A final chapter looks at the work of the eighteenth-century antiquarians who struggled to find and preserve what scraps they could of a language that they knew to be dying as a vehicle of social intercourse, and then at the literature which has been and which is still being produced by the revivalists. This is the first full-scale presentation of Cornish writings as literature, and it should be of interest in particular to the medievalist-at-large, and especially anyone interested in medieval drama. All quotations are provided with translations. BRIAN MURDOCH is head of the Department of German at Stirling University. In 1989 he was Visiting Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge; he became Litt.D. (Cambridge) in 1992 for publications in modern and medieval Germanic and Celtic languages. |
Common terms and phrases
A. S. D. Smith Abel Adam angels apocryphal appears Beunans Meriasek biblical Boson Breton Brittany Cain Camborne Celtic century Christ Constantine Cornish Drama Cornish Language Cornish literature Cornish play Cornish text Cornwall Creation David death devil dramatist earlier echoes edition English cycles example French Glasney Glasney College Golden Legend Gospel Gospel of Nicodemus Gwavas Gwreans harrowing of hell hell Henry Jenner Holy Rood legends Jenner John John Boson Keigwin Kernewek Kernow Lamech later Latin Lhuyd lines linguistic linked literary London Lucifer manuscript Mary medieval Middle Ages miracle Mistére motif narrative Neuss Newlyn Nicodemus Noah Northern Passion Ordinalia Origo parallel Pascon agan Arluth passage Passion-poem Pilate Pilate's poem R. M. Nance Redruth reference repr rhymed scene serpent Seth Silvester St Meriasek stage directions stanzas story strophe surviving Teudar Thomas Tonkin tradition translation Unified Cornish verse Virgin Welsh Whitley Stokes William words