Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies to host the 2022 J. E. Caerwyn and Gwen Williams Memorial Lecture

The Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies will host the J. E. Caerwyn and Gwen Williams Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, 9 November.

Professor Barry Lewis from the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (DIAS).

This Memorial Lecture was established in 2001 in memory of the late Professor J. E. Caerwyn Williams and the late Mrs Gwen Williams.

This year’s guest speaker is Professor Barry Lewis from the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (DIAS).  Professor Lewis studied Modern and Mediaeval Languages at the University of Cambridge before doing a Master’s degree there in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic in 1998–9. From 1999 to 2004 he was a doctoral student in the Department of Welsh, University of Wales, Aberystwyth. In 2001 he was appointed Research Fellow in the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth. While there, he worked on three projects: ‘Poets of the Nobility’, ‘Guto’r Glyn’ and ‘The Cult of Saints in Wales: Medieval Welsh-Language Sources and their Transmission’. He joined the School of Celtic Studies at DIAS in November 2014.

The lecture will be entitled, ‘O vitae sanctorum i gywyddau’r saint’. Many Welsh poems were sung to honour saints during the last hundred or hundred and fifty years of the Middle Ages. Although this seems to be a new type of poetry that first appears in Iolo Goch’s work, it did not emerge out of a void. Behind these poems was an extensive body of Latin Lives, the vitae sanctorum. Some of these Lives have survived to this day, but we know that there were many more at one time: in Wales, as throughout Christendom, many saints were honoured with Lives, or at least with liturgical readings. This lecture will discuss how the poets set about creating a new medium to greet their local patron saints, drawing on the older Latin tradition, but fulfilling the needs of quite a different audience.

Professor Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones, Director of the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, said ‘We are delighted that Professor Barry Lewis, a former researcher at CAWCS, will be presenting this year’s Memorial Lecture. Professor Lewis is a talented scholar and we very much look forward to the event.’

The lecture will be held online on Wednesday, 9 November 2022, at 5.00pm. Email cawcs@wales.ac.uk to receive the Zoom link.

This lecture will be in Welsh.

Note to Editor

Contact: Dr Angharad Elias (Admin Officer) a.elias@wales.ac.uk

1. The Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies (CAWCS) was established by the University of Wales in 1985 as a dedicated research centre conducting team-based projects on the languages, literatures, culture and history of Wales and the other Celtic countries. It is located in Aberystwyth, adjacent to the National Library of Wales, which is an internationally-renowned copyright library with excellent research facilities.

2. CAWCS offers unique opportunities for postgraduate students to work alongside specialists in a dynamic and supportive environment. We welcome enquiries about MPhil/PhD topics in any of our research areas. For more information about research opportunities, or for an informal chat about possible topics, contact our Head of Graduate Studies, Dr Elizabeth Edwards: e.edwards@wales.ac.uk

3. CAWCS is the home of the Dictionary of the Welsh Language: https://www.welsh-dictionary.ac.uk/   

Further Information

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