Blogtrotter

Googling "Welsh Nationalism"


I'm deep in it, around page 20, and part of research, if this counts as such, is sifting through 200 entries as disparate as Stormfront, Labourites frantically disassociating themselves from my search phrase, LuxuryVacationWales-dot-com, and orthographically challenged bloggers. Compliments my similar blog post this week on "Welsh Republicanism." Here's a few handfuls (plus two pop culture sprinkles) of useful sites, trawling backwards, which I record here to save you the trouble, whomever you are, of such sifting. Hwyl!


Chris Bertram's blog "Crooked Timber" weighs in on Byron Rogers' failure to win Welsh Book of the Year for his biography of R.S. Thomas. http://crookedtimber.org/2007/09/03/the-man-who-went-into-the-west/

Trash Fiction --Alwyn W. Turner's superb site of 1300 worthies-- trumpets a fine novelization of the Aberfan coal-tip collapse by John Summers, a journalist who covered the tragedy, as "The Edge of Violence." Reissued and abridged in pulp paperback as "The Disaster," this also relates a character's involvement with the Free Wales Army. http://www.trashfiction.co.uk/disaster.html

There's a separate link from this Trash Fiction site to an interview by Anthony Brockway with John Summers: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/elizabeth.ercocklly/john.htm

This in turn spins to Brockway's coverage, blogged as "Babylon Wales." His pages for "The Wolf Man Knew My Father: Notes from the Margins of Welsh Popular Culture, incisively interviewing inter alii Niall Griffiths, link to not only literary lights but musical splendor from the likes of Young Marble Giants & Super Furry Animals & Gorky's Zygotic Mynci. Not to mention Jon Langford. And (at least) three ladies famed in "Welsh erotica," for alert archival adepts.
http://www.babylonwales.veryweird.com/

Back to scholarship: Geraint Jones compiled a reading list on the Welsh language's recent impact, within the nationalist cause and cultural revival.
http://users.comlab.ox.ac.uk/geraint.jones/about.welsh/books.html

Jeffery Alan Triggs' MLA talk on "R.S. Thomas & the Problem of Welsh Identity" also looks at Joyce's "Portrait" passage about the tundish for context. http://www.leoyan.com/global-language.com/triggs/Nationalist.long.html

Welsh Republican Comment's page on Meibion Glyndŵr; WRC has related pages on leftist and radical Celtic movements and socialist & republican counterparts in Ireland and elsewhere. http://groups.msn.com/WelshRepublicanComment/glyndwr.msnw

Plaid Cymru activist Alan Jones at his blog "Independence Cymru" discusses his thoughts on nationalism:
http://alanindyfed.blogspot.com/2007/09/thoughts-on-nationalism.html

Scott Keech's "The Red Dragon" examines, from this 1970 essay, Welsh nationalist arguments. It reproduces a then-current Plaid campaign poster; another article, not here, promises to argue against Plaid!
http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF001970/Keech/Keech01/Keech01.html

Ivor G.H. Evans & Graham Hughes debate, in 1983, "Wales' End?" (This did not show up on the search, but a separate one for John Jenkins and MAC retrieved it.)
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/6322

Carwyn Fowler's a scholar and a harpist with many publications on Welsh political and cultural identity. I'd like to read her papers on Daffydd Iwan and on folk-rock in Welsh, but there's no link to contact her.
http://carwynfowler.blogspot.com/2006/04/rhestr-cyhoeddiadau-carwyn-fowler.html

A Welsh political blog with a lot of insider babble and misspellings from its readers, but perhaps of use for those in on the lingo and gossip:
http://taffiadon.blogspot.com/

"Welsh Blog Index Welsh Political Blog of the Year 2007" so this boasts:
http://normalmouth.blogspot.com/

Sue Davies offers anti-monarchical inspiration: http://cymruwales.net/002sue-monarchy.html

Gethin "Iestyn" Gruffydd characterizes a trope of autodidactic nationalism familiar to me from my early days of Net discussion lists regarding the hardy Irish varietal, in the pre-Blogspot, pre- and post-GFA, and pre-decommissioning decade! Ireland's subdued, still Cymru shifts and Kernow stirs. Lots of energetic, if rough-hewn, related Welsh activist blogs under his profile.
http://welshremembrancer.blogspot.com/

Richard Wyn Jones, Aberystwyth historian of the movement, compares the Welsh ideology with the Irish and Scandinavian models in "Nationalism & Utopia": http://www.nupi.no/content/download/1682/40359/file/Nationalism%20and%20Utopia.pdf

Constance FitzGibbon replies to Conor Cruise O'Brien's essay on the Dylan [as in Thomas] myth in this 1966 letter from the NY Review of Books. She makes intriguing comments about the supposed lack of support by Irish nationalists for the language, contrasted with the Welsh insistence for its use as the very "kernel" of Cymric identity and ideology.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/12589

Trystan Owain Hughes, of Trinity College, Carmarthen, analyzes "Welsh Nationalism & Twentieth-Century Roman Catholicism."
http://spruce.flint.umich.edu/~ellisjs/Hughes.PDF

Johan Schimanski lectures on "Cultural & Political Nationalism in Wales" in this dissertation excerpt. He glances at Plaid's journals in the 50s, Y Ddraig Goch & The Welsh Nation, the party's history, and Saunders Lewis, before a reading of a short episode in a Welsh-language novel by the author Islwyn Ffowc Elis, "Cysgod y Cryman," from 1953. http://www.hum.uit.no/a/schimanski/artikler/cultpol.htm

Image from the Wikipedia article on "Welsh Nationalism." Christopher Williams' "The Awakening of Wales," 1911. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Welsh_nationalism