Is this how Genre works? The tale of the oldest animals in Culhwch and Olwen.

 (Ongoing notes from an attempt to translate Culhwch ac Olwen from medieval Welsh to modern English and from prose to verse. See previous post for an example. )

In 'Culhwch and Olwen' there's the 'Tale of the Oldest Animals' which I've just finished drafting. You have to accept animals can talk and people will understand them. But....the story itself...

Arthur and his men need to find Mabon mab Modron. To do this, they have been told that first they have to find his cousin, Eiddoel mab Eri. They find Eiddoel easily enough, he's being kept prisoner in a place called Gliui by someone with the same name.

Gliui is identified by the editors as Gloucester. Fair enough. Later, after a trek from one 'Oldest animal' to an 'Even older animal' our heroes discover Mabon is being held prisoner in Kaer Loyw, which the editors also identify as Gloucester. 

So they free Eiddoel from the same place they free Mabon, though they go round the Wrekin to achieve this. 

Does genre work by setting up a tacit bargain with the reader: Some questions are inappropriate? If for general example, you're reading the Grimm's version of Snow White you should not stop and ask what the prince is going to do with the dead girl in the glass coffin when he gets it home. Nor should you try and imagine his arrival at the palace and his parents' reaction. It will kill the story.

Inappropriate, unanswerable questions here?

How can they both be prisoners in the same place? Who is keeping Mabon prisoner? Presumably it’s not Gliui because he's offered Arthur his help and support? Was he lying? Is Arthur at fault for not asking if Gliui knows where Mabon is? Why do they assume that 'No one knows where Mabon is' means 'Don't ask anyone except an animal'? Why does no-one on the river hear Mabon lamenting?  Why have they been told they needed Eiddoel to find Mabon when he is sent on the search but contributes nothing to it? 

Why is the episode so satisfying and enjoyable until you start asking these questions? And this is true of so much of Culhwch ac Olwen. 

Are we back with a specific version of Culler's 'Literary Competence'. The idea that you have to learn to read a literary text as a literary text on its own terms? And with this story, that means not trying to read with a modern set of assumptions based on a learnt 'Literary competence' for dealing with modern short stories or novels? 

Translating 'Culhwch and Olwen'. Giants, ants and perplexing verbs.

 These poems were first published in The Brazen Head

https://brazen-head.org/2024/08/19/three-translations-from-culhwch-ac-owen/

(I.m Michael Alexander)

 

 

Translating Culhwch ac Olwen.

 

In popular films the sexy treasure hunter/archaeologist

(they conflate the two, much to my trowel wielding friends’ dismay)

who’s fluent in every lost forgotten ancient language,

confronting the inscription on the recently uncovered wall,

or gazing at the long lost rediscovered legendary text,

looks, then translates, without a pause, the symbols 

into fluent, idiomatic, contemporary American.

 

The reality goes more like this:

 

Kilyd son of Kledon Wledic

Wanted a wife as noble as himself.

Here is the woman he wanted.

Goleudyt daughter of Anlawd Wledic.

 

So far so good. 

 

After they stayed together What? Gwest Ah, see note.

They spent the night together. Is that too direct?

The verb’s related to the one for copulation. 

They came together. After they were married

….bland. After they slept together,

no, the story teller could have used kysgu gan.

The cruder options? No. Not here. What follows? 

 

The country went to pray they ?might have? offspring

And they got a child/boy through the prayers of the country.

And from the hour she captured, caught? 

The next word’s definitely ‘pregnant’. Another note. 

‘Became pregnant’ though literally ‘caught pregnancy’.

As though it were an illness, perhaps better than ‘fell pregnant’

which evokes abrupt decline, or woman, falling?

Then she went wild/feral. Another note.

‘She went mad’. Mad or wild is somewhere you go to

in this case beyond the civilised boundaries.

She’s gone mad and won’t come near a building.

Wouldn’t enter a building? 

 

And from the time that she was pregnant, 

She went wild and wouldn’t enter any building.

And when her time came, she came to her good sense.

You go mad but come to your senses. The payoff’s here,  

the sudden twist estranging your own language.

You go out of your mind as though it were a car, 

and you could leave it in the car park to return to 

when finished being mad and needed it again. Anyway, 

what’s next? Pigs!? What? We’re up to line 7, only 

one thousand two hundred and thirty eight to go.

 

 

 

May I marry your daughter?

 

(The giant Ysbaddaden Pencawr knows he will die when Olwen, his beautiful daughter, marries. Understandably, he doesn’t welcome her suitors. But Culhwch has been told that if he doesn’t marry Olwen, he will never marry anyone. He and his six companions set out to ask the giant for her hand in marriage.What isn’t stated but becomes obvious is that the giant can’t be killed until his daughter is married. )

 

 

They killed the nine gatekeepers, 

and not a man cried out.

They killed their nine huge mastiffs;

not one so much as squealed.

And so they came into the hall.

 

‘Ysbaddaden Pencawr! Greetings

in the name of God and man!’

 

‘You, where are you going?’

 

‘We seek your daughter, Olwen,

for Culhwch son of Kilyd.’

 

‘Where are those rascal servants?

Where are those ruffians of mine?

Raise up the forks under my eyelids

so I can see my future son in law.’

 

This they did. ‘Come back tomorrow 

I’ll have an answer for you then.’

 

He had three stone spears beside him,

each tipped with poison.

As they turned to go he seized one 

and flung it after them.

Bedwyr caught it and hurled it back,

piercing the giant through his knee cap.

 

‘Cursed savage son in law! 

It will be worse for me when I go downhill.

Like the sting of a gadfly, 

the poisoned iron has hurt me.

Cursed be the smith who made it 

and the anvil on which it was forged.‘                  

 

They stayed that night at Custennin’s house.

And on the second day, they set out to the hall, 

in majesty, with fine combs in their hair.

 

‘Ysbaddaden Pencawr, 

give us your daughter.

In return for her dowry and marriage fee 

to you and her two kinswomen.

And if we don’t get her from you;

you’ll get your death from us.’

 

‘Her four great-grandmothers 

and her four great-grandfathers 

are still alive. I must consult them.’ 

 

‘You do that. We’ll go eat.’

 

He took the second spear 

and hurled it after them.

Menw mab Teirgwaedd 

caught it and threw it back. 

It pierced the centre of his chest 

and sprung out the small of his back.

 

‘Cursed savage son in law.

The pain of this hard iron

is like the sting of a horse-leech. 

Cursed be the forge wherein it was heated.

Now, when I go uphill, 

there will be a tightness in my chest,

stomach aches and frequent nausea.’  

 

They went to their food.

 

On the third day they came to the court.

‘Ysbaddaden Pencawr, 

stop throwing spears at us.

Do not wish hurt and harm 

and death upon yourself.’

 

‘My eyelids have fallen over my eyeballs-

Where are my servants, raise up the forks

so I may look on my future son in law.’

 

They arose, and as they rose,

he took the third spear

and hurled it at them. This time, 

Culhwch caught it and threw it back,

and as he wished, it pierced the eyeball 

went through and out the back of his neck.

 

‘Cursed savage son in law.

As long as I live the sight in one eye 

will be worse than the other.

Whenever I walk in the wind it will water.

I’ll have headaches and giddiness 

at the start of each moon.

Cursed be the forge that heated it. 

Worse than the bite of a mad dog 

is the sting of its poisoned iron.’

 

Next day they came to the court.

‘Don’t attack us anymore.

You’ll bring hurt and harm 

and martyrdom to yourself.

Give us your daughter.’

 

‘Which one of you was told to seek her?’

‘Me, Culhwch, son of Kilyd.’

‘Come here so I can see you.’ 

A chair was placed under him, 

so they could be face to face.

 

‘Is it you who seeks my daughter?’

‘I do.’ ‘Give me your word 

that you’ll be just?’ ‘I give it.’

‘When you give me what I name, 

then you will have my daughter.’ 

‘Name what you want.’

 

-------------- 

 

(Ysbaddaden gives Culhwch forty impossible tasks. This next poem tells how one of them is achieved. Gwythyr is one of Culhwch’s companions.)

 

The Lame Ant

 

As Gwythyr mab Greidawl 

was crossing a mountain, 

he heard lamentations:

a most bitter wailing.

 

Dreadful this noise.

He rushed towards it

drawing his sword, 

cutting the anthill 

off at the ground

saving the ants from

the blistering flames.

 

‘God’s blessing and ours upon you,’

they said to him.

‘And that which no man can recover

we will recover for thee.’

 

These were the ants 

who collected the flax,

all the nine hestors

Ysbaddaden demanded.

 

But one seed was missing.

Until just before sunset.

it was finally brought in

by the last, limping ant. 

 

 

 

The poetry voice podcast returns.

The Poetry voice podcast returns. A free audio anthology of poetry, from the earliest times to the present day. 

The latest episode is here: http://www.liamguilar.com/2024/8/13/wbyeats-politics

Originally designed to accompany courses I was teaching on the history of English poetry and the pleasure of poetry, each episode consists of a reading of a single poem.  There is no commentary or explanation, just the poem. Sometimes the difference between engagement and indifference is a passable reading of the poem. 

A brief introduction to each poem and the poet is contained in a written note which accompanies the episode, though these are kept as short as possible.

There's been a long break due the amount of construction work that has been going on around here. Hopefully no more demolition or power tools or tradies with their radios blaring. I can't do anything about birds, dogs, traffic and the occasional chiming clock but hopefully those are not too intrusive.

You can listen on Spotify or Apple or directly at 

http://www.liamguilar.com/the-poetry-voice

There is a list of all poems to date here:

http://www.liamguilar.com/poetry-voice-index

clicking on any of these links will open a new window. 

Translating Culhwch and Olwen. (publication)

I've been translating the story of Culhwch and Olwen, a medieval Welsh tale. It's usually flagged as 'the oldest surviving story of King Arthur.' My aim  is to translate medieval Welsh prose into a modern English verse sequence.  You can read the first published attempts by clicking on the link below which will take you to David Cooke's The High Window where you'll find many other excellent things.  

 Seven extracts from Culhwch and Olwen

Lancelot and Guinevere, a version of Malory's Le Morte Darthur.

 

Lancelot, Seeking Perfection, Encounters Guinevere.

 (Parts 1-8)

A man convicted of high treason was hung, drawn and quartered. For the same crime, a Woman was burnt. 

 

1)

 

The brutal years build muscle on his arms

but leave his head and heart exposed.

Refine the character, exceed ideals, become

the definition of his age; the man

all men are measured by, the man most women

dream they lie beside. Conscripted as the hero 

for an epic tale which runs ahead 

drawing the path he has to follow,

what could he ask his world would not allow?

 

Time happened somewhere else.

Hung in her room, where tapestries

depict dead saints and lovers, 

green eyes stab up and in.

Nothing that he’s ever learnt 

deflects their judgment 

when he has retired

to his familiar quarters,

mocking the years of discipline. 

What he thought self-denial

was an absence of desire.  

He’s never wanted anything 

except this expertise in death

his peer’s respect, the crowd’s acclaim

and now her voice creating shadows in his life

whispering his name.

 

2)

 

The altar candles prove 

more is hidden than they can reveal.

His knees on stone, head bowed

the darkness and the ache familiar

as the words he’s lost.  

A virgin cannot understand

and who is being crucified?

What God of Love denies the act?

He sees their bodies writhing in the Pit.

He sees their bodies writhing in her bed.

Convicted of a guilt he won’t accept,

death certain either way,

he gains a vantage point

from which he can survey

walls he cannot leap, 

a moat too foul to swim,

but if he’ll crawl along the razor’s edge

the bridge of swords

might let him in.

 

3) 

 

They’ll stuff his genitals into his mouth 

choking the sight of his intestines

smoking on the coals.

She reaches underneath his skin

draws out his heart, begins to feed.

He licks the blood that’s coursing down her chin

the drips between her breasts

the splashes on her belly, on her thighs. 

Mouth locked on mouth as though words 

had no place or purpose here

they fall together. Driven 

by his desperation

he tries to climb inside, curl up 

beneath the refuge of her ribs

deny whatever still divides.

 

4)

 

She watches from her window, 

sees the carters stack the wood

they’d use to burn a guilty queen. 

The crowd shoals as the victim’s 

dragged towards the stake.

This room. This bed. 

 

Behind her she can hear the roaring

flames, of hell or execution makes no odds,

blistering the skin her lover sang about.

Cries of pleasure modulate to cries of pain.

Aren’t torturer and lover both the same? 

Both shred the public face, unleash  

the sweating beast no song can gloss.

Withdrawn behind her gowns 

she is the queen again,

to make him be some faithful champion,

not the man whose busy hands and tongue

brought so much joy.

 

5)

 

The narrative imperative, 

illogic of the grail, 

which only Galahad escapes: 

no matter how elaborate the fuck;

negotiate an aftermath!

 

Not the familiar strangeness

reentering the everyday

as clothes hung on the floor

hide cooling flesh,

the blinds are drawn

masks are adjusted, 

civilities observed,

nor the furtive exit, 

from her quarters 

lies succeeding lies

facing friends 

he has betrayed, 

and learning how 

to look them in the eyes.

 

But this essential singularity: 

two bodies leave the room

treading their separate paths.

 

6) 

 

To purge the sin that settles like 

the stench of bodies burning in the square

he dedicates himself to harsher quests,

to the purity the grail is offering.

He rides on, famished, cold

beyond the mark where other heroes fail.

What good’s the world’s applause 

for what he knows is fraud?

 

She is the landscape 

he would wander through

but to what end, except 

participation in the mystery

of repetitious suicide

the frantic fumbling 

frenzied flesh to flesh

discovering, as each one falls,

more walls, more ditches, 

more locked doors.

 

The mountains, chapels, grottos

victories; the casual deaths,

the endless miracles all pale.

Not wanting to succeed, 

how can he fail? 

 

7)

 

He returns, to claim his prize                         

to learn, too late,

unlike a castle, gates slammed shut 

she can be had, but can’t be held.

The treachery of metaphors: 

a sleazy go-between

reality and understanding,

having drawn them to the bed,

stoked the flames and hung them

on a fantasy of comprehension

denies responsibility and runs

to sell them for a quarter. 

 

8) 

 

Free of impediments, 

she turns aside 

from futures 

they had whispered.

 

Call it remorse, 

guilt, Christian 

upbringing

A lesser man 

would call it 

a betrayal.

 

He waves goodbye 

and wishes 

one last kiss, 

which she denies.

 

Alone, of course, his knees on stone, 

head bowed, the ache familiar

as the worlds he’s lost.  

The candle flames illuminate

smirking icons who deride

the sterile echoes of his prayers  

scratching at the gate of Heaven

pleading for a second chance. 

Stripped to the clarity of remorse

what’s left but dying, devotion

and perfecting his repentance?

This poem is printed in 'Rough Spun to Close Weave', published by Ginninderra Press and available on line or from  http://www.liamguilar.com/shop/rough-spun-to-close-weave 

A Celtic Quest, by John Layard. A review of sorts.

A Celtic Quest. John Layard 1975.

 

In my last post I praised ‘This is not a Grail Romance’ for attempting to read a medieval story on its own terms. John Layard’s ‘A Celtic Quest; Sexuality and Soul in Individuation. A depth-psychology study of the Mabinogion legend of Culhwch and Olwen’ is a fine example of what happens when a critic does the opposite, taking a text and imposing a reading practice on it.

 

As a demonstration of a psychoanalytical meditation on a text, the book is fascinating. As one way of thinking about the development of an individual, it is coherent and thought provoking. But I think it would work best if you haven’t read the story it claims to be studying. 

 

As a reading of the text, rather than a performance that uses the text as a starting point, it doesn’t offer much in the way of critical enlightenment. It suffers from the author’s wide knowledge of what something might mean and his assumption that because something might mean something in another story, it means the same thing in this one. His willingness to shoehorn the story into an existing theoretical paradigm requires a willing suspension of incredulity on the part of any reader who isn’t a card carrying Jungian. 

 

Ironically  I suspect the book’s value may lie in forcing a reader to be patient and negotiate the tension between the reading and the text. The struggle to suppress the temptation to throw the book away, and find some useful insight into the story is salutary.

 

Firstly, a reader has to suppress the urge to object to statements like this:

 “’Born in a pig run’ is equivalent to being ‘born of a sow’ (p.11.).’ No. Simply, no, they are not. Culhwch’s mother is most definitely not a sow. 

 

Secondly. Anything can symbolise anything. Freud’s great perception about dreams was that the symbolism is always specific to the dreamer. This seems a useful way of approaching symbolism in stories. It’s not Layard’s. He is wedded to the idea of archetypes. He reads the story as though it could be neatly analysed and explained by recourse to an old fashioned book of dream symbols.

 

When Culhwch and his companions find Custennin the shepherd, the latter is sitting on a mound overlooking his limitless flock of sheep: 

‘…he is a man in the service of the Devouring mother, since in dreams and mythological imagery, the mound he stands on would seem to symbolise the breast’ (p.38)

 

At times this borders on self-parody. When Olwen’s father is finally beheaded and his head stuck on a stake; 

‘Another aspect of body imagery is that it may be that the mound symbolises the breast, with Ysbaddaden’s head on it  stake representing the ‘bad nipple’ . The hero seizes the good one ‘And he took possession of his fort and his dominions’.; the fort of the breast and the immense power it wields.’(p.198) 

 

With all due respects, this is hard to take seriously. There is nothing in the story to suggest ‘the fort of the breast’,  and this in a story where the storyteller delighted in playing with the potential absurdity of names.  Culhwch does not take possession of ‘the fort and his dominions'.  The ‘he’ in that sentence refers to another character, Goreu, who is also the one who beheads Ysbaddaden.

 

It feels as though symbolism is being found everywhere for the sake of finding symbolism with little reference to the story. When Cei murders Wrnach the Giant, having first tricked the giant into giving him his sword, Layard writes:

 

‘The scabbard here stands for the giant’s muddled head, into which Cei plunges the sword. The sword also symbolises the power of insight (the Logos) that pierces and destroys the blind forces of darkness (the blackness of the giant) or of the unconscious super-conservativism and resistance to change that giants are apt to represent.’ (p.102) 

 

Faced with such a reading it seems almost pedantic to point out that Wrnach is not described as black or back haired. But it does seem to be a worth asking how this applies to the story. Who gains what insight? Wrnach is dead, and Cei is about to leave the story in a fit of petulance after Arthur teases him. 

 

How the reading applies to the story is a constant question. Most readers will see Culhwch’s stepmother’s actions as wilfully (perhaps spitefully) putting him in danger. When she says he will not marry any woman unless it is Olwen, the phrase she uses  ‘ Tygaf tyghet’ is glossed by Bromwich and Evans as ‘I will swear a destiny’ and they point out the same phrase is used by Aranrhod, in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi,  when she swears her three [debilitating] destinies on her own son, Lleu. As Culhwch soon finds out, no one asking for Olwen’s hand has escaped alive. 

 

However, for Layard: ‘stepmother and fairy god mother are thus seen to represent two aspects of the same female spiritual principle, at first appearing to be 'bad’ but turning into the ‘good’. Such will be seen to the nature of the stepmother in this present tale, who in fact causes the hero to undertake all sorts of fearsome tasks so as, in the end, to win the prize most worth having, the spiritual bride or soul’.  (p.13). 

 

It feels pedantic, again, to point out that Culhwch doesn’t complete ANY of the forty tasks he’s given. Other people do it for him. He earns nothing, and learns nothing. He isn’t so much a non-hero as a non-presence in most of the story. The paradigms of the fairy tale or the ‘hero journey’ are not helpful here and what fairy godmothers and step mothers do in other tales seems irrelevant. 

 

These are not isolated or uncharacteristic examples but I think they demonstrate how a reading practice is being imposed on the text. 

 

Like most reading practices it also requires the reader to accept the critic’s assumptions: in this case those underwritten by a Jungian Binary, which in a simplified form, wants  to divide everything into two columns, one marked ‘male’ and the other ‘female’, regardless of gender or actions in a story. The Twrch Trwyth, the terrifying wild boar who slaughters men and devastates provinces, who can only be hunted by the mustered warriors of three kingdoms: 

..’is the image himself of nature outraged at having to be transformed, female in origin but in male guise to indicate its wild destructiveness’. (p.11) (The TT is a King who God has turned into a boar for his sins, and the aim of the hunt is not necessarily to  kill him, but to seize the comb, razor and sheers from between its ears.)

 

The binary is 19^th century and to non Jungian acolytes completely arbitrary. Things are masculine or feminine because someone said they were. ‘Magic is always feminine” … and “…thought is a masculine attribute which women can have as well as men (witness the stepmother) once they admit the man as mate and not only as son’. (p.197)

 

Her husband is murdered so she can be the second wife of Culhwch’s widowed father. Her speeches in the text do not suggest ‘thought’ or that she has any attitude towards her new husband except relief to find he isn’t impotent.

 

Culhwch and Olwen is one of the world’s great literary performances. In its entirety it is like no other text. It is full of inconsistencies, and lacking in what a modern reader might expect in terms of character development and plot. It is not a fairy tale. But Leyard’s treatment of it as though it neatly illustrates a Jungian approach to Individuation, ignores the story itself and becomes an excellent example of what happens when a modern reading practice is imposed on a medieval text. 

 

 

 

This Is Not A Grail Romance. Natalia Petrovskia a review of sorts

This Is Not a Grail romance: Understanding Historia Peredur uab Efrawc.  Natalia l. Petrovskaia . University of Wales Press, 2023. 

 'If the material before us fails to conform to our present-day European concepts of logic and unity, perhaps instead of rejecting the text should reject the logic and find a new one'. (Llyod-Morgan. Qtd page. 15).

Beyond its value to students of the Welsh story, this book demonstrates the value of approaching a medieval text, not with the assumption that it is a flawed attempt at a modern narrative, but as an attempt, not so much to read it on its own terms, but to discover what these terms might be. 

Background.

The default approach to medieval texts is to see them as clumsy approximations of modern literature. To be sure there are 'works of genius' but 'Chaucer would be so much better without the digressions'. 

There are two strands to this approach which start at the same point but head in different directions. In one the 'literary flaws' of the text are enumerated. The lack of coherence, of character development, the digressions, the absence of a proper narrative arc, are all pointed out. The Writer is like a child who is trying to do something that is beyond him or her. Nice try, but...

The second approach, specific to this topic, is the one which sees the Welsh prose stories collected as 'The Mabinogion' as incoherent. The writer didn't understand or wasn’t in control of the material, the stories are the ruined, garbled remains, of lost precursors. There is a critical tradition in which the scholar, having  identified the incoherence, attempts to recreate the original, coherent, story.  Given such stories no longer exist, the reconstruction usually says more about the scholar than the story.

Both approaches are underwritten by the idea that literature is an organic entity subject to Darwinian evolution, and after the high point of Greek and Latin literature,  the awkward fumbling of the medieval Makar are the clumsy beginning of a progression which improves over time to whatever you currently think of as excellent.

This is both highly patronising to the creators of our texts: if only they'd have been to a modern writing workshop they might have done better, and insulting to their audience who were obviously willing to put up with any kind of rubbish because evenings were long and Netflix hadn't been invented.

But it  shuts down a proper consideration of medieval storytelling. It's not possible to learn from something that’s already been dismissed as inadequate.

End of background

So here's to Natalia Petrovskaia, and her willingness to treat Peredur on its own terms. Her analysis of the structure seems to prove that this is not just a random accumulation of events but a carefully built story working to its own rules. 

Her argument is based on the recognition that there are two surviving versions of this story.  The Short Version, which owes little to the French, and the Longer Version or Short Version +Continuation. The latter is what modern readers encounter in a translation of  ‘The Mabinogion’ and it is incoherent, inconsistent and repetitive.  

By focussing on the shorter version, which is the oldest surviving version,  she rejects the idea that Peredur is a badly written single narrative. She argues that the short version is three distinct stories, self-contained, which are linked by being about the same hero. The key is that the individual episodes ‘can be taken not merely as episodes in a grander narrative, but as complete semi-independent narratives forming distinct units that can be removed, replaced and re ordered. Most importantly, there are no internal contradictions or inconsistencies within each of these units.' ‘Any inconsistences that can be found (eg. the seemingly ever changing object of Peredur’s affections) are to be found between these episodes, not within them. '

She refines her argument to see the story’s organisation as a fractal structure,  specifically a Sierpinski gasket. This fractal model offers a mnemonic structure for the story teller: Three episodes, each composed of three sub episodes, each involving three consecutive scenes of encounter. 

Part of her argument reminds me of  Carol Braun Pasternack's arguments about the 'Movement' nature of Old English Poetry, and while that leap is mine, not Petrovskaia's, it adds weight to her argument.  

The coherence of her model would seem to prove her point as does the experience of rereading the story after reading her book.

Secondly, her argument that this is not a Grail Romance seems incontrovertible. Perdedur is not shown a Grail or does he seek one. (Hands up those who, like me, first read it as a Grail story because they had been told it was, and wondered what they'd missed.)

Thirdly this is not a Romance in the generic Medieval meaning of that term. 

We read in ways we've been taught. Our reading practices shape not only our responses to texts, but create the texts themselves. Modern reading practices get in the way of our engagement with medieval stories.  Rather than treat each text on its own terms, the critic and reader try to fit the text into learnt patterns based on teaching and prior reading. When a text doesn’t fit the pattern, it, rather than the pattern, is found wanting. Christopher Cannon made this point brilliantly in the context of post-conquest English literature in 'The Grounds of English Literature'. But it's a point that needs repeating. 

There are other arguments in the book. Whether the landscape of some of the episodes can be linked to specific places and the story contextualised geographically is a moot point. Certainly a Welsh /Border landscape supports the argument about the Welshness of the story. However while Identifying a specific castle by a convent where the Nuns are in poverty is difficult, the fact that the attempt is possible reinforces the idea that the original audience would have felt these landscapes familiar and plausible in ways a modern audience can’t.  

The Welshness of the story has been argued over. Petrovskia makes a sound argument that what she calls the 'Short Version' originated in Wales, and not as an attempt to copy a French original. 

Her conclusion:

This is not a Grail Romance nor is it  a Romance. Peredur is not a single narrative but carefully built episodes. 

What she designates as Episodes 1 to 3 not only show no trace of stylistic incompetence, but  demonstrate structural virtuosity; are anchored in Welsh historical, literary, legal and cultural contexts, and originated in Wales.  

Short, clearly written, carefully argued,  beyond its value to present and future students of Peredur Vab Efrawc, it is a demonstration of the benefits of approaching a  story with the assumption that the text is the way it is because someone who knew what they were doing made it that way for people who enjoyed and appreciated the end product.