{"id":5343,"date":"2019-05-17T11:50:32","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T15:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/?p=5343"},"modified":"2019-05-17T11:50:32","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T15:50:32","slug":"ydw-dwin-siarad-cymraeg-yes-i-do-speak-welsh-or-why-i-do-what-i-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/2019\/05\/17\/ydw-dwin-siarad-cymraeg-yes-i-do-speak-welsh-or-why-i-do-what-i-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Ydw, dwi\u2019n siarad cymraeg (Yes, I do speak Welsh), or why I do what I do"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having been asked to write the final blog post for the 2018-2019 academic year, I thought I might offer a personal reflection on my own journey as an academic and medievalist, which may, at least in some small way, be indicative of many of the journeys of my friends and colleagues. At a time when the study of the arts and humanities continues to suffer\u2014much to the detriment of democracy at large and despite the fact that these fields enrich our lives and culture\u2014we who work in these areas often find ourselves asking ourselves\u2014and defending to others\u2014why we do what we do. This becomes even more keen when you study older as well as minority languages\u2014and if you\u2019re a medievalist, even though everyone loves the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Instagram: @drgrayfang \/ Via Facebook: asoiafmemes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Indeed, it\u2019s been an eventful month for medievalists and for medieval-inspired genres in general. Between Game of Thrones<\/em> and its issues with portraying women and people of color, the rampant racism medievalists in general are trying to combat, and the usual rush of writing papers for the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, there\u2019s a lot to discuss. As a professor, a researcher, a fandom nerd, a mother, and a procrastinator, I find a lot of this problematic. While I don\u2019t have any solutions, I can at least offer my thoughts on the importance of primary research, especially primary research in its original language, and why being multilingual is important for all of us.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Grey King by Susan Cooper.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I was a child, I had two goals: travel to all seven continents and learn exactly why \u201cY maent yr mynyddoedd y canu, ac y mae\u2019r argwyddes yn dod\u201d meant \u2018the mountains are singing, and the lady comes\u2019 in Welsh. Fast forward a few decades, and I\u2019ve achieved five out of seven continents, and I know enough Welsh to recognize that the grammar of \u201cY maent yr mynyddoedd\u2026\u201d is a little wonky. I\u2019m willing to cut Susan Cooper a little slack, though, because she was the one, through her YA novel The<\/em> Grey King<\/em>, that set me on my weird Welsh journey anyway. I was that strange child that wanted to read the Bible in its original Hebrew and Greek form because I knew that it would be the \u201ctruest\u201d version (the benefit of being a scholar, I get how problematic that goal is now.) I wanted to speak all the languages and understand all the stories\u2014and I still do!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I grew up in a very white, very middle-class suburb of Los Angeles, where diversity was just a couple of towns over\u2014not that we went there because, you know, traffic and crime rates. Because of this desire to understand beyond my knowledge, as well as the limitations of my own perspective, I show Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie\u2019s \u201cThe Danger of a Single Story\u201d TED talk every semester, without fail, no matter what class I\u2019m teaching. I\u2019ve shown it to high school freshmen for Study Skills and upper division college students in a King Arthur class. I\u2019ve seen the video so many times that I can recite parts of it, and it still grabs me every single time.<\/p>\n

College was what broke my belief in a single story. A trip to France in high school cemented my hardcore drive to travel EVERYWHERE and see ALL THE THINGS, but college actually pushed me out of the nest and forced me to look multiple perspectives in the face. It dropped a pile of primary sources into my lap and told me to read and digest all of them. While my undergraduate experience didn\u2019t teach me Welsh, it at least pushed me toward the possibility of the Middle Ages, an all-encompassing knowledge of King Arthur, and the idea that I could learn the highly accurate history of it all.<\/p>\n

(Oh, my sweet summer child.)<\/p>\n

Twenty years later, I am a medievalist with a specialization in the King Arthur of the medieval British Isles and France. I learned Welsh\u2014in Wales no less\u2014to push my ability to analyze primary texts. I used more dead languages than English in my dissertation but still call myself an English major (funny how literature departments are still organized around nation-states). I now teach writing and medieval literature at every college in Buffalo, NY (fine, only three of them, or maybe four\u2026).<\/p>\n

\"\"
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, taken by Kara Larson Maloney.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have a six-year-old who can already recite the names of Arthur\u2019s knights as well as tell you what her favorite castle is. She voraciously devours folklore from around the world and prefers Ancient Egypt and stories of Anansi to what mama studies. Her princesses and princes come from India and China and Japan, rather than just the standard Disney European variety. And she\u2019s conquered four out of seven continents. I\u2019m not sure which language(s) she\u2019ll choose when she gets older, but she takes great delight in telling people that gwely<\/em> means \u2018bed\u2019 in Welsh\u2014the apex of my attempt at raising her bilingual and studying Welsh in Wales while pregnant with her. She\u2019s grown up with parchment and chainmail, and she loves swinging around the cloth-and-wood flail she got from a castle in France two years ago. She knows<\/em> that there is more than one story, and she sees many of those stories every day in her very public, very urban elementary school.<\/p>\n

So, why Welsh? Why did a minority language in an English-colonized country become my passion? As a medievalist and Arthurian scholar, it makes sense. Arthur was Welsh. Full stop. Even if I\u2019m not sure I believe he ever existed\u2014since we have little-to-no extant irrefutable historical evidence\u2014I still believe his origins come from Wales, be those the literary origins of the Trioedd Ynys Prydein<\/em> (Welsh Triads<\/em>), the \u201cMabinogion,\u201d or Y Gododdin<\/em>. If I study Arthurian literature and how the concept of chivalry changed across the English Channel between the ninth and sixteenth centuries, I should know Middle Welsh, as well as Latin, Old French, Anglo-Norman, and Middle English for good measure. Plus, it\u2019s as good an excuse as any to realize that childhood dream of being able to translate a Welsh spell from a kids\u2019 fantasy novel.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Roman Amphitheatre, Caerleon, possible seat of one of King Arthur’s courts. Photo by Kara Larson Maloney.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Why Welsh? Because there\u2019s a dedicated movement within Wales right now working on reclaiming the heritage that the English took from them, linguistically and culturally. Because there\u2019s a rising demand for Welsh-language schools in Wales, and the number of speakers is actually growing. But also because the ability to read the Triads<\/em> and other sources of archaic knowledge in their original form ensures that this information will be remembered and kept alive. And because, as the ever-eager scholar, I am always in search of that irrefutable truth for which I longed in my childhood, the Ur-text that explains why the idea of King Arthur still persists in popularity, even when sometimes partnered with giant robots from outer space in modern sci-fi fantasy.<\/p>\n

As a medievalist, I know how fragile our material history is. Look at how many erupted into tears as Notre Dame burned last month. Think of how often we wonder about what we lost when the library at Alexandria was demolished or when the Cotton Library burned in the fire of 1731. Think of the destruction of the monasteries under Henry VIII or even of what codices were lost when the Vikings raided again and again in the eighth and ninth centuries. And this still happens\u2014think of the attack on the shrines of Timbuktu in 2012.<\/p>\n

The physicality of history is not immortal. While we find new primary sources and discover magical new insights into the past every year with our leaps forward in technology, we still lose so much. Remember when ISIS destroyed the statues at the gates of Nimrud, or when they demolished the Temple of Baalshamin and the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, or, even earlier, when the Taliban blew up the statues of Buddha. Think of every mosque and synagogue that Christians have irrevocably altered in the past thousand years, not the least of which being the Mezquita in C\u00f3rdoba or the synagogues of Toledo. Our physical artifacts are all we have to help us understand who we were and why things\u2014socially, politically, economically, etc.\u2014are the way they are. Our primary sources, in their original languages, can help us ensure we understand as much as possible about the past, which is the only<\/em> way we can understand our present moment. Serious study and serious inquiry into the past can help prevent the co-opting of cultural narratives for nefarious purposes, the way white supremacists and the alt-right have pushed for an all-white medieval Europe and erasure of people of color. Why Welsh? Because every language and every culture have something to teach us. Because diversity\u2014in people, in languages, in nature\u2014makes the world richer. Also because I\u2019m obviously a nerd. Why the desire to visit all seven continents? So that I can experience, firsthand, the different stories that each culture, each region, each country presents. So that I can prevent my daughter and my students from recognizing only one story.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Bayeux Cathedral, photo by Kara Larson Maloney.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Every year for the past three years, I\u2019ve gone into my daughter\u2019s classroom and talked to her classmates about heroes, knights, the evolution of writing, and mummies (because mummies). I\u2019ve given them pieces of parchment to create their own illuminations. I\u2019ve handed them chainmail, leather helms and bracers, and answered how King Arthur died (\u201cIt\u2019s complicated\u2026\u201d). It\u2019s not just public scholarship (of which we need more!); it\u2019s also ensuring that these stories, and that consciousness of the materiality of history, are passed on.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Lady Stormborn, Smallest Viking, photo by Kara Larson Maloney.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Because when I was eleven years old, a friend gave me the Dark is Rising <\/em>sequence for my birthday, and those books inspired a lifelong love of the Middle Ages and some Welsh warlord named Arthur. Because knowing the political complexities of Geoffrey of Monmouth\u2019s era and being able to read what was said about him in Latin and in Welsh better informs me of why he may have spun Arthur in the imperial\/anti-imperial way that he did. Because all we have are fragments to help us understand past cultures, and when we preserve what we have for future generations, we preserve the very diverse voices that white supremacy is trying to kill. This is why I do what I do.<\/p>\n

Kara Larson Maloney, Ph.D.
\nCanisius College<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having been asked to write the final blog post for the 2018-2019 academic year, I thought I might offer a personal reflection on my own journey as an academic and medievalist, which may, at least in some small way, be indicative of many of the journeys of my friends and colleagues. At a time when … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Ydw, dwi\u2019n siarad cymraeg (Yes, I do speak Welsh), or why I do what I do”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1846,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[468547,264204,56012,264206,16403,264201,246737],"tags":[76062,14827,76056,73966,76046,76025,73962,324759,138,67720,264413,324761],"class_list":["post-5343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celtic-languages-and-literatures","category-disciplines","category-english","category-history-disciplines","category-pedagogy","category-the-future-of-the-humanities","category-the-profession","tag-academia","tag-history","tag-humanities","tag-king-arthur","tag-material-culture","tag-medieval-literature","tag-mythology","tag-public-scholarship","tag-racism","tag-wales","tag-welsh","tag-world-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1846"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5343"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5352,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5343\/revisions\/5352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}