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Africa, according to the contributors to this anthology, is "one cultural river with numerous tributaries articulated by their specific responses to history and the environment." They concentrate on the similarities in behavior, perceptions, and technologies of African culture that tie those tributaries together. The fourteen original essays by leading scholars of African studies are organized in four general divisions which consider the ethno-cultural motif, the artistic tradition, concepts of cultural value, and cultural continua. ... Read more

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Music in Wales has long been a neglected area. Scholars have been deterred both by the need for a knowledge of the Welsh language, and by the fact that an oral tradition in Wales persisted far later than in other parts of Britain, resulting in a limited number of sources with conventional notation. Sally Harper provides the first serious study of Welsh music before 1650 and draws on a wide range of sources in Welsh, Latin and English to illuminate early musical practice. The book challenges two prevailing assumptions, both of them false: namely that music in Wales before 1650 is impoverished and elusive; and that the extant sources are too obscure to warrant serious study. Harper demonstrates that there is a far wider body of source material than is generally realised, comprising liturgical manuscripts, archival materials, chronicles and retrospective histories, inventories of pieces and players, vernacular poetry, and treatises.The book is structured around three distinct musical categories: the uniquely Welsh practice of cerdd dant ('the music of the string', for harp and crwth); the Latin liturgy in Wales and its embellishment, and 'Anglicised' sacred and secular materials from c. 1580, which show Welsh music mirroring English practice. Taken together, the primary material presented in this book bears witness to a flourishing and unique musical tradition of considerable cultural significance, aspects of which have an important bearing on wider musical practice beyond Wales. ... Read more

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"Teach Yourself World Cultures: Wales" is a concise and lively overview of Wales: the country, its language and its people. If you are learning the language, in, for example, an evening class and want to know more about the country and how it works, this is the book for you. Or, if you simply have an interest in Wales for whatever reason, it will broaden your knowledge about the country and its inhabitants. The book is divided into three sections. Chapters One and Two deal with the forces - historical, geographical, geological, demographical and linguistic - that have brought about the formation of the country we know as Wales and the language we know as Welsh. Chapters Three to Seven deal with the wealth of creative aspects of Welsh culture from the beginnings to the present day. These chapters take a look at the main areas or works of literature, art and architecture, music, traditions and festivals, science and technology, fashion, and food and drink, together with the people who have created and are still creating them.Chapters Eight to Eleven deal with aspects of contemporary Welsh society and the practicalities of living in present-day Wales: the way the political structure of the country is organized, education, the environment, the workplace and how people spend their leisure time. The final chapter looks at the country's political, economic and social relations with the wider world, and takes a glance at the future. Each chapter ends with a section entitled 'Taking it Further', where you will find useful addresses, websites, suggested places to visit and things to see and do in order to develop your interest further and increase your knowledge. Each chapter also contains a list of useful words and phrases which will help you to talk or write about the subject in question. "Teach Yourself World Cultures: Wales" is your key to understanding Wales' past, present and future and contains all the information you need to participate in Welsh life and culture. ... Read more

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Visions and Visionaries is an apt title for this volume of essays on contemporary Austrian literature and film, because this collection offers insightful discussions of a gal-lery of significant authors and cultural figures. It also investigates important issues of style and genre, and portrays questions of Austrian identity and culture in rich contexts of recent literary and multi-media developments, cross-cultural interactions, and historical forces. This book encompasses relevant trends and notions from the past—especially the com-plexities of lingering effects of the Nazi era—along with issues of the future—in particular the present and anticipated interactions of culture and cyberspace. The essays are en-hanced by poems by Evelyn Schlag and Gerhard Kofler. ... Read more

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A little-known lecture by Lévi-Strauss is the inspiration for this work. In this lecture, he intuitively suggested that in medieval Europe there once existed a set of myths, centred on the grail, which are structurally the opposite of the goatsucker myths that he famously analyzed in his mythologiques series. This work uses Lévi-Strauss' inspirational lecture as a launchpad for an exploration of a group of related medieval Welsh myths, two of which have been briefly considered previously by Lévi-Strauss himself. The root of the methodological approach this book employs throughout is the Structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss; however, it has been modified to incorporate the suggestions of later neo-Structuralists. This analysis tool is applied to a group of myths, which have become conveniently--if somewhat erroneously--known as the Mabinogion. The name Mabinogion appears as part of a colophon at the end of one of the myth of Pwyll and it was later adopted first by Pugh (1835), and then by Lady Charlotte Guest (1838) as a title for their now famous translations of Welsh mythology. Consequently, the title has stuck to describe the material that is contained within their translations and, while it is a somewhat inaccurate way to describe the myths, it has the virtues of being both a succinct and widely recognised signifier. The term has come to signify eight myths, or perhaps more accurately eight groups of myths, which are all present in the late fourteenth-century manuscript Llyfr Coch Hergest (The Red Book of Hergest), and all but one of which can be found in the slightly earlier Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch (The White Book of Rhydderch). As such, the Mabinogion is the key collection of medieval Welsh mythology and an important source for early Arthurian material.Although Structuralism and the Mabinogion have attracted a good deal of attention from the academic world, there has been never been a sustained attempt to follow Levi-Strauss' intuitive insights with a methodical Structuralist analysis of this material. In the year of Lévi-Strauss' centenary celebrations, this work is the first sustained attempt to follow his intuitive suggestions about several Mabinogion myths with a detailed Structuralist analysis of the Mabinogion. This work is therefore a unique anthropological presentation and analysis of the Mabinogion, which argues for a radical, new interpretation of these myths in light of the existence of a central system of interlocking symbols that has the Grail at its heart. Through the analysis, the book reveals a logical organizational principle that underlies a body of material that has previously been viewed as disparate and confusing. This underlying structure is demonstrated to be, as Lévi-Strauss suggested it may, the opposite of that which Lévi-Strauss himself uncovered in the Americas. The revelation of this new form of underlying structure leads to a rethinking of some important aspects of Structuralism, including the Canonical formula, at the same time as acting as a tribute to the farsightedness of Lévi-Strauss. This book makes important contributions to the fields of Arthurian studies, anthropology, Celtic studies, cultural studies, medieval studies, mythology and religious studies. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Renaissance Quarterly, published by The Renaissance Society of America on December 22, 2008. The length of the article is 762 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Music in Welsh Culture before 1650: A Study of the Principal Sources.(Book review)
Author: Patrick K. Ford
Publication: Renaissance Quarterly (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 22, 2008
Publisher: The Renaissance Society of America
Volume: 61Issue: 4Page: 1335(2)

Article Type: Book review

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Chapters: Culture in Cardiff, Culture in Newport, Newport Ship, Caerleon, Spillers Records, Wales Millennium Centre, W. H. Davies, Cardiff Central Library, Culture and Recreation in Cardiff, Cardiff Music Scene, Tigertailz, List of Cultural Venues in Cardiff, Newport Rising, Cardiff Big Weekend, Bbc National Orchestra of Wales, Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra, Newport Transporter Bridge, Welsh National Opera, Newport Cathedral, Riverfront Arts Centre, St David's Hall, Crumlin Arm, Newport Castle, Tredegar House, Xpress Radio, Gair Rhydd, Newport Wetlands Reserve, New Theatre, Newport Civic Centre, Fourteen Locks, National Roman Legion Museum, Dolman Theatre, Newport Museum, Newport Centre, Red Dragon Centre, Cardiff Film Festival, Somerton Tardis, the Point, Cardiff, Sherman Cymru, Chapter Arts Centre, T. J.'s, Compass Point Festival, Newport City Live Arena. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 175. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt:Wales Millennium Centre (Welsh: ) is an arts centre located in the Cardiff Bay area of Cardiff, Wales. The site covers a total area of 4.7 acres (1.9 ha). Phase 1 of the building was opened during the weekend of the 2628 November 2004 and phase 2 opened on 22 January 2009 with an inaugural concert. The centre has hosted performances of opera, ballet, dance, comedy and musicals. The venue, which also has a nickname locally as the Armadillo, comprises one large theatre and two smaller halls. It also includes shops, bars and restaurants. The Centre is home to the national opera, dance, theatre and literature companies of Wales, as well as the national orchestra. In total, the Centre has eight arts organisations in residence. The main theatre, the Donald Gordon Theatre, holds 1,897 people, the BBC Hoddinott Hall holds 350 people and the Weston Studio Theatre ho...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=705606 ... Read more

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Chapters: Welsh Language, Culture of Wales, Welsh Mythology, Cultural Relationship Between the Welsh and the English, Welsh Placenames, Eisteddfod, Saint David's Day, Investiture of the Prince of Wales, Welsh Surnames, Pontarddulais Male Choir, Côr Meibion Pontypridd, Miss Wales, Sunday Closing Act 1881, Welsh Holidays, the Square Festival, Survey of Anglo-Welsh Dialects, Welsh Mam, List of Welsh Video Games, Tir Iarll, Welsh Literature, Côr Meibion Pontarddulais. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 127. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Welsh ( or , pronounced ) is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border, in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia, and the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The most recent figures (2004) presented in the 2004 Welsh Language Use Survey by the Welsh Language Board indicate 611,000 (21.7% of the population of Wales in households or communal establishments) were able to speak Welsh. This figure marks a 0.9 percentage point increase when compared with a figure of 20.8% from the 2001 Census. Of those 611,000 Welsh speakers, 62% claim to speak Welsh daily. This figure rises to 88% amongst those who consider themselves fluent in Welsh. A greeting in Welsh is one of 55 languages included on the Voyager Golden Record chosen to be representative of Earth in NASA's Voyager program launched in 1977. The greetings are unique to each language, with the Welsh greeting being Iechyd da i chwi yn awr ac yn oesoedd which translates into English as "Good health to you now and forever". See Welsh English, sometimes known as "Wenglish", for the English language as spoken in Wales. Officially, the English and Welsh languages have equal status in W...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=33545 ... Read more

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The Britons were the Celtic people living in Great Britain from the Iron Age through the Early Middle Ages. They spoke the Insular Celtic language known as British or Brythonic. They lived throughout Britain south of about the Firth of Forth; after the 5th century Britons also migrated to continental Europe, where they established the settlements of Brittany in France and the obscure Britonia in what is now Galicia, Spain. Their relationship to the Picts north of the Forth has been the subject of much discussion, though most scholars accept that the Pictish language during this time was a Brythonic language related to, but perhaps distinct from, British. The earliest evidence for the Britons and their language in historical sources dates to the Iron Age. After the Roman conquest of 43 AD, a Romano-British culture began to emerge. With the advent of the Anglo-Saxon invasion in the 5th century, however, the culture and language of the Britons began to fragment. By the 11th century their descendants had split into distinct groups, and are generally discussed separately as the Welsh, Cornish, Bretons, and the people of the Hen Ogledd ("Old North"). ... Read more

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Contents: Multatuli's Woutertje Pieterse and Vorstenschool: The (Un) poetic Truth of Upward Mobility; A.W. de Groot's Strukturele syntaxis and Modern Language Theory; Rewriting the History of the Dutch: On the Use of Social History to Explain Linguistic Change; The Moral Economy of Natural History and Medicine in the Dutch Golden Age; Poet after the Death of God; Forum Aesthetics and Incorrectness of F.C. Terborgh; Mennonite Martyrdom in Amsterdam and the Art of Rembrandt and His Contemporaries; The Discovery of the External World in the Short Stories of Carry van Bruggen (1881-1932); Afrikaans Literature in the Netherlands; Color Versus Comportment in the Middle Dutch Moraien; Romeyn de Hooghe: Porno-graveur? A Peek at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Erotica; Determinism versus Contingency and Synchrony versus Diachrony: Explaining "Holes" in Dutch Grammatical Patterns; De Stijl and the Amsterdam School: A Historiographic Dilemma; Stress in Dutch and Afrikaans: A Comparison; Dreams and Pieter Breughel the Elder's Dulle Griet; The Idea of Being a Dutchman; Normative Self-Reflection in Early 17th-Century Amsterdam; Contemporary Afrikaans Literature and the Legacy of Apartheid: The Afrikaner in Search of a New Identity; Body Expressivity in Dutch and Flemish Modern Dance of the Early 1990s; Alexander Morus and John Milton II: Milton, Morus, and Infanticide; Jeroen Brouwers' Sunken Red: The Function of Fiction within the Novel; The Curse of the Missions: Jacob Haafner (1754-1809) and the Christian Missions; "So That It Will Not Happen All Over Again": Narrative Technique in Maria Dermout's "The Ten Thousand Things." Co-published with the American Association for Netherlandic Studies. ... Read more

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