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8 - Whither Wales?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

Geraint H. Jenkins
Affiliation:
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
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Summary

Few twentieth-century poets who composed in Welsh were more widely admired than Waldo Williams. Although he did not produce a large corpus of work, as an imaginative interpreter of the Welsh sense of identity he had few equals. Poems such as Cofio (Remember) and Cymru'n Un (Wales Is One) resonate with historians as compelling expressions of the interdependence of geography, history, landscape, people and language. He referred to ‘things that are long forgotten, / Now lost in dust of eras that have passed’ and viewed the role of the remembrancer as ‘keeping house amid a cloud of witnesses’. Thus, despite the title of this postscript, that which lies in the lap of the future is not part of a historian's remit. A nation is shaped by its history and by its people, and Wales, like every other nation, whether of long-standing or recent construction, requires a bank of cultural memory. History in all its forms, whether true or false, imagined or invented, spoken or written, told or retold, plays a critical role in a people's view of their identity. It is therefore worth considering how talismans of national identity have changed over the centuries and how historians have examined and fostered, according to the needs of their own times, an appreciation of the otherness of Wales. It bears repeating that Wales is an imagined community, a construct which, amoeba-like, changes its shape and character according to the desires of its people and the influence of external forces.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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  • Whither Wales?
  • Geraint H. Jenkins, University of Wales, Aberystwyth
  • Book: A Concise History of Wales
  • Online publication: 05 June 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511990090.009
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  • Whither Wales?
  • Geraint H. Jenkins, University of Wales, Aberystwyth
  • Book: A Concise History of Wales
  • Online publication: 05 June 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511990090.009
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Whither Wales?
  • Geraint H. Jenkins, University of Wales, Aberystwyth
  • Book: A Concise History of Wales
  • Online publication: 05 June 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511990090.009
Available formats
×