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This dissertation explores the complex interactions among written text, language choice, and political context in Wales in the late-eleventh and early-twelfth centuries. I argue that writers in medieval Wales created in both their literary compositions and their manuscripts intricate layers of protest and subversion in direct opposition to the authority of the Anglo-Norman political hegemony and the aggrandizing spread of the Canterbury-led church. These medieval literati exploited language and script as tools of definition. They privileged Welsh or Latin when their audience shifted, and they employed the change from early Insular script to the Caroline script of the Normans as not just a natural evolution in script development, but as a selective representation of mimicked authority. The family of Bishop Sulien at Llanbadarn Fawr has been the focal point of this study, as they were active during a time of Anglo-Norman intervention in their community that is reflected in the shifting script of their manuscripts and the apprehensive though proud tone of their compositions, which include the vitae of saints David and Padarn and the poetry of Ieuan and Rhygyfarch ap Sulien. My work provides a much-needed cohesive portrait of the multilingual medieval Welsh literary culture at the turn of the twelfth century. Questions of audience and authority come into play, particularly when considering the growing hybridity of learned communities during the Anglo-Norman infiltration of Wales. Manuscripts themselves are viewed as vehicles of identity, for the evolution of script and design offers clues as to the methods of compromise practiced by Welsh intellectuals. This compromise in the written word can be viewed as an embodiment of the Welsh desire and need to mediate fraught political boundaries, as they did using both the ‘nation’-defining Welsh language and the vehicular prestige language of Latin, resulting in an intertextual exploration of identity through the act of writing itself. Writing is a critical demonstration of Welsh authorship and agency in medieval Britain, and one that can be used to reflect upon notions of Welsh identity. / Celtic Languages and Literatures

Cette thèse propose d’explorer les enjeux de la pratique de la traduction de français en anglais après la Conquête normande, à partir d’une comparaison des deux romans anglais et leurs sources respectives. La première partie s’attachera à examiner le rapport entre le Roman de Brut, écrit au 12e siècle par l’auteur francophone Wace, et sa traduction en anglais, le Brut de La3amon, effectuée au début du 13e siècle. Une autre étude constituera l’essentiel de la seconde partie, portant sur l’examen comparatif de deux versions, française et anglaise, du roman d’Alexandre le Grand : le Roman de toute chevalerie de Thomas de Kent et Kyng Alisaunder, roman anonyme du 14e siècle. / This thesis investigates issues of translation from French to English in post-Conquest England by means of a comparison of two Middle English romances and their respective French sources. The first part of the thesis will examine the relationship between the Roman de Brut, written by the francophone author Wace in the 12th century, and its English translation, La3amon’s Brut. The second part is devoted to a comparative study of French and English versions of a romance about Alexander the Great, the 12th century Roman de toute chevalerie, by Thomas of Kent, and its 14th century translation, Kyng Alisaunder.

This study explores Layamon's engenderment of cultural unification for the explicit purposes of an Anglo-Welsh cultural resistance to the Norman overlords in the March of Wales. In essence, I examine some of the most important cultural signifiers in medieval English and Welsh culture and the methods by which the poet adapts and grafts them together to form a culturally amalgamated text—neither explicitly English nor Welsh but yet simultaneously both - and the political implications of this amalgamation. Though Laymon's methodology emanates from multiple aspects of the text, I have concentrated here on what I feel are the most explicit manifestations of this theme: Merlin, his prophecies, and the Law of the March. / Master of Arts