The Mabinogion
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Anonymous or composite
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~100,000 words · 495 passages
Cite this work
- APAMabinogion. (n.d.). The Mabinogion. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mabinogion/the-mabinogion
- MLAMabinogion. "The Mabinogion." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mabinogion/the-mabinogion.
- ChicagoMabinogion. The Mabinogion. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mabinogion/the-mabinogion.
What it is about
The Mabinogion: the medieval Welsh tales, in one volume.
Context and history
Eleven stories from fourteenth-century manuscripts preserving much older material: Pwyll, Branwen, the hunt for the boar Twrch Trwyth, and the earliest appearances of Arthur in European literature. **Warning: the catalogue also holds volumes 1, 2 and 3, and it has not been checked whether this one contains them.** The case is open.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Whilst engaged on the Translations contained in these volumes, and on the Notes appended to the various Tales, I have found myself led unavoidably into a much more extensive course of reading than I had originally contemplated, and one which in great measure bears directly upon the earlier Mediæval Romance. Before commencing these labours, I was aware, generally, that there existed a connexion between the Welsh Mabinogion and the Romance of the Continent; but as I advanced, I became better acquainted with the closeness and extent of that connexion, its history, and the proofs by which it is supported. At the same time, indeed, I became aware, and still strongly feel, that it is one thing to collect facts, and quite another to classify and draw from them their legitimate conclusions; and though I am loth that what has been collected with some pains, should be entirely thrown away, it is unwillingly, and with diffidence, that I trespass beyond the acknowledged province of a translator. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there arose into general notoriety in Europe, a body of “Romance,” which in various forms retained its popularity till the Reformation. In it the plot, the incidents, the characters, were almost wholly those of Chivalry, that bond which united the warriors of France, Spain, and Italy, with those of pure Teutonic descent, and embraced more or less firmly all the nations of Europe, excepting only the Slavonic races, not yet risen to power, and the Celts, who had fallen from it. It is not difficult to account for this latter
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