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‘I Will Tell You a Word or Two About Cardiganshire’: Welsh Clerics and Literature in the Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Geraint H. Jenkins
Geraint H. Jenkins*
Affiliation:
University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
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Extract

In the process often characterized by Welsh historians as ‘the remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century’, the clergy played a central role in the literary and national revival. While the national and international contexts of these cultural movements are of paramount importance, particularities also count, and need to be integrated into the larger picture. An examination of the special flavour of the careers of several literary-minded clerics and other writers in the deeply rural county of Cardiganshire offers a means of throwing light on some of these broader themes, and of illustrating the importance of literacy, culture, and learning to relatively humble middling sorts within a particular community notorious for its isolation, poor communications, monoglottism, and slow-moving economy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 38: The Church and the Book , 2004 , pp. 303 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004

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