RHAGLEN Y GYNHADLEDD CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
LLYFRGELL GENEDLAETHOL CYMRU NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES ABERYSTWYTH 14–16/09/2015
Mewn cydweithrediad â / In collaboration with: Cyfnewidfa Lên Cymru / Wales Literature Exchange ac / and Amgueddfa Ceredigion Museum
Prif ddarlith / Keynote: Yr Athro / Professor Michael Cronin (Dublin City University) Cyfweliad: Yr awdur Basgaidd Kirmen Uribe mewn sgwrs gyda Ned Thomas Interview: Basque writer Kirmen Uribe in conversation with Ned Thomas
Rhwydwaith / Network: LLGCWPA Cyfrinair WiFi Password: pFvdE2kDX
Hashnod trydar / twitter Hashtag: #MinTrav
Amgueddfa Ceredigion Museum Terrace Rd, Aberystwyth, Dyfed SY23 2AQ
Conference Dinner Pier Brasserie The Royal Pier, Marine Terrace, Aberystwyth SY23 2AZ. Ffôn / Tel: 01970 636123
Dydd Llun, 14 Medi 2015 Monday, 14 September 2015
11.00 Cofrestru o flaen y DRWM, Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru Registration in front of the DRWM, National Library of Wales
12.30 Cinio / Lunch
13.40 DRWM – Croeso / Welcome Address
14.00 DRWM – Panel 1a: Belgian Refugees in Wales John Alban: ‘Belgian Refugees and Swansea’s Belgian Community’ Caterina Verdickt: ‘Belgian artists finding refuge in Wales during the Great War’ Rhian Davies: ‘Soir héroïque: Belgian refugee musicians in Wales’ Ystafell y Cyngor / Council Chamber – Panel 1b: Women Travellers Alison Martin: ‘A Welsh "Assembly": Compilation and Adaptation in Priscilla Wakefield's Family Tour (1804)’ Kathryn Walchester: ‘The Picturesque and the Beastly; Wales in the journals of Lady’s Companions Eliza and Millicent Bant (1806, 1808)’ Silvia Pelicier-Ortín: ‘A Minority in Search of Identity: Travel Writing and the Representation of British-Jewish Women in Linda Grant’s The Cast Iron Shore and When I Lived in Modern Times’
15.30 Te/ Tea Break
16.00 DRWM – Panel 2a: Iberian Travellers David Miranda-Barreiro: ‘“Everything Stays the Same”: Julio Camba Travelling Spain’ Bárbara Álvarez Fernández: ‘Everything but the squeal: A portrait of present day Galicia’ Enrique Santos Unamuno: ‘Galician National Identity and Extraterritoriality in Diarios dun nómada (1993) by Xavier Queipo: a Geoliterary and Cartographic Approach’ Ystafell y Cyngor / Council Chamber – Panel 2b: Literary Travellers Ruth Oldman: ‘The Chivalrous Nation: Travel and Ideological Exchange in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ Amy L. Klemm: ‘Traversing Across Imagined Lands: Magic Realism and “Minority” Culture’ Marija Bergam: ‘“A language of wet stones and mists”: A Caribbean Poet as Traveller through England and Wales’
17.30 Swper / Dinner
19.00 DRWM Sgwrs rhwng Kirmen Uribe a Ned Thomas A Talk with Kirmen Uribe and Ned Thomas
Dydd Mawrth, 15 Medi 2015 Tuesday, 15 September 2015
10.00 DRWM – Panel 3: Involuntary Travellers Gabor Gelleri: ‘Exile meets minority: chevalier La Tocnaye’s “promenades”’ Arddun Arwyn: ‘German Prisoners of War in Wales’
11.00 Coffi / Coffee Break
11.30 DRWM – Panel 4a: Western Travellers Eimear Kennedy: ‘Complex Encounters: Irish-language travel writers and the cultural “other”’ Julie Watt: ‘Highlanders in West Africa’ Diana Luft: ‘Identity? Politics: William Griffith’s African Adventure’
Ystafell y Cyngor / Council Chamber – Panel 4b: Minorities of the Imaginary Jessica Reid: ‘“Folk” celebration? Thomas St. Serfe’s “The Prince of Tartaria, his Voyage to Cowper in Fife”’ Christopher McMillan: ‘A Discription, A journey and a Prophecy: Scottophobia in English Literature, 1626-1763’ Lorna McBean: ‘White Man Writing: Language of Colonisation in the writings of William Lithgow (1582-1645)’
13.00 Cinio / Lunch
14.00 DRWM – Panel 5a: Purposeful Travellers Marion Löffler: ‘German Scholars in Wales, c.1840–c.1880: Friedrich Carl Meyer’ Adam N. Coward: ‘Rambles and Studies of the United States Consul in south Wales’
Ystafell y Cyngor / Council Chamber – Panel 5b: Travellers and Commodities Gwyn Griffiths: ‘Yr Ymwelwydd Tymhorol o Lydaw’ Anna-Lou Dijkstra: “‘Guidebook Gazes”: Wales Through Dutch, German and French Eyes, 1990-2010’ Melinda Szarvas: ‘Immobile travel: The “postcard-literature” in Yugoslavia’
15.30 Te / Tea Break
16.00 DRWM – Prif Ddarlith / Keynote Lecture: Michael Cronin ‘Minority Reports: Travel, Language and the Politics of Microspection’
19.30 Cinio’r Gynhadledd / Conference Dinner: Pier Brasserie
Dydd Mercher, 16 Medi 2015 Wednesday, 16 September 2015
9.30 Amgueddfa Ceredigion Museum Arddangosfa ‘EwrOlwg: Cymru drwy Lygaid Ymwelwyr o Ewrop, 1750–2015’ Exhibition ‘EuroVisions: Wales through the Eyes of European Visitors, 1750–2015’
10.00 Panel 6: Travellers and Material Culture Robert Lewis: ‘Welsh Language and Bilingual Provision in Tourism in Wales’ Jacqui Ansell: ‘Difference and Decorum: Addressing Dress in Published Travelogues’
11.00 Dychwelyd i Lyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / Return to the National Library of Wales
12.00 DRWM Panel 7: Curious Travellers Elizabeth Edwards: ‘“[B]leak and desolate as anything I have seen in Scotland”: Mary Brunton on the home tour’ Mary-Ann Constantine: ‘“To find out all its beauties, a man must travel on foot”: Catherine Hutton’s explorations of Wales’
13.00 Casgliadau / Closing Remarks
Dydd Llun, 14 Medi 2015 Monday, 14 September 2015
11.00 Cofrestru yng Nghyntedd Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru Registration in the Foyer of the National Library of Wales
12.30 Cinio / Lunch
13.40 DRWM – Croeso / Welcome Address
14.00 DRWM Ystafell y Cyngor / Council Chamber Panel 1a: Panel 1b: Belgian Refugees in Wales Women Travellers
Panel 1a: Belgian Refugees in Wales Cadair / Chair: Robert Evans
Belgian Refugees and Swansea’s Belgian Community Following the outbreak of the Great War, Great Britain received the largest influx of refugees in its history, as over 250,000 Belgians arrived, having fled from the advance of the German army across their homeland. It was an exodus which has been described as ‘a migration phenomenon without previous precedent in the modern history of Europe outside the Balkan peninsula’. The arriving refugees were dispersed across the whole of the United Kingdom, including many parts of Wales. Relief for them was coordinated by the central War Refugees Committee in London, but was actually delivered by local committees, of which there were over 2,500 across the country. Some 700 of these Belgian refugees came to Swansea, mainly in 1914 and 1915, where they united with a large, pre-existing Belgian community, mainly composed of the families of metal-workers, the first of whom had arrived in the town in the late 1840s, when they had brought their expertise, gained in the zinc works of Belgium, to help develop Swansea’s own newly-established spelter industry. The welcome and support which the Belgian refugees received in Swansea were generally very positive, especially when compared with the sometimes adverse experiences of refugees in other parts of the United Kingdom. The energies and dedication of Swansea Corporation – and especially of the Swansea Belgian Refugee Committee – made a large contribution to this success, but, as a visiting Belgian minister pointed out in 1916, the people of Swansea themselves also played their own vital part in ensuring that these less fortunate souls received a good welcome. As a consequence, links between Swansea and Belgium were maintained post-war and were re-affirmed during the Second World War, when an even larger contingent of Belgian refugees returned to the town. John Alban University of East Anglia
Belgian artists finding refuge in Wales during the Great War The outbreak of the war in August 1914 brought an enormous influx of Belgian refugees on the move. Hundreds of thousands Belgians arrived in Britain, among them hundreds of architects and artists. The Belgians were warmly welcomed since Britain felt partly responsible for the agony of the Belgian population. In the UK the Belgians were housed, cared for and employed. The British cultural society offered many opportunities for the exiles, not only the people themselves were cared for, also the reconstruction of Belgium has been prepared and researched by many British and Belgian architects. A conference for this purpose only was held in 1915 in order to prepare the rebuilding of Belgium. Apart from this urbanization aspect many artists and architects stayed in Britain during the war and interacted with society. One must realize that because of the scattering events of the war a logical well conducted cultural policy is lacking, although the situation was very different in Wales. Yet, these refugees came aboard in Britain and were dispatched all over the country. Some thrived, some merely survived. In the many documents, archives, personal letters and artefacts significant cases can be found, and these cases can be used to illustrate the larger mechanisms and schemes of an exiled artistic community. This paper however will focus on the effects of this migration on the Belgian artists who were involved in interior architecture. An interesting example is the one of Valerius de Sadeleer and his daughter Elisabeth who by invitation of the Davies sisters of Aberystwyth made Rhydyfelin their home for several years during the Great War. When they returned to Belgium in 1922 they named, as a token of recognition, their new home in Tiegem ‘Tynlon’ after their Welsh home. More important Elisabeth and her father worked in the new Arts and Crafts centre in Aberystwyth. They were commissioned to do so by the Davies sisters, who were very keen on injecting Aberystwyth’s cultural life with renowned continental artists. Elisabeth trained in tapestry weaving in the William Morris tradition. When back in Belgium her tapestry firm grew to be one of the most important in the country in the inter-war period. Caterina Verdickt Antwerp University
Soir héroïque: Belgian refugee musicians in Wales In October 1914, Gwendoline and Margaret Davies – heiress grand-daughters of the nineteenth-century industrialist David Davies, Llandinam – assisted a select group of Belgian refugees to settle in Powys and Ceredigion with the aim of raising cultural standards in Wales. A major retrospective exhibition of artworks produced during their time here by Valerius De Saedeleer, George Minne, Edgar Gevaert and Gustave van de Woestijne was held at National Museum Cardiff and the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent in 2002. The exhibition catalogue alludes to ‘several well-known musicians from Brussels’ who also came to Mid Wales, but who were they and why had their narrative disappeared? This discrepancy was the spur to my research and a remarkable story has emerged of the distinguished singers, instrumentalists and composers who held prominent positions at the Brussels Conservatoire, Royal Palace and Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie before forming a
concert-party to tour Wales in aid of the Belgian Relief Fund, 1914-16. Eugène Guillaume and Nicolas Laoureux wrote and premièred music in Aberystwyth while Joseph Jongen’s Crépuscule au Lac Ogwen was inspired by a holiday in Snowdonia. David van de Woestijne – Gustave’s son – was born in Llandinam and grew up to become a leading Belgian composer of the next generation. Developed as part of Gregynog Festival 2014: War, featured during Welsh Government’s commemorative programme Cymru’n Cofio | Wales Remembers 1914-1918 and a revelation to cultural commentators when first unveiled at a Brussels press conference in June 2014, this presentation draws on uncatalogued sources in Wales and Belgium to retell the story of these forgotten refugees and restore them and their repertoire to rightful attention. Rhian Davies Artistic Director, Gregynog Festival
Panel 1b: Women Travellers Cadair / Chair: Ruth Oldman
A Welsh "Assembly": Compilation and Adaptation in Priscilla Wakefield's Family Tour (1804) Priscilla Wakefield, a leading British author of children's educational non-fiction in the early nineteenth century, produced her best-selling Family Tour through the British Empire ... Adapted to the Amusement and Instruction of Youth in 1804. This account of the topography of the British Isles (the "Empire" of the title) did not, however, reconstruct a journey she had herself undertaken. Rather, it was a "sketch, having the air of a real tour [...] containing the prominent features of the subject" that was an unashamed compilation and adaptation of existing literature, woven selectively by Wakefield into her work. Focusing specifically on the pages devoted to Wales, I shall be exploring how she transposed an intriguing range of material – from Richard Warner's Walk through Wales (1800) to Thomas Warton's poem The Grave of King Arthur (1777) – into a narrative that sought to be informative as well as imaginatively engaging. My interest, though, is not solely in the dialogic relations between these texts and their cultural re-evaluation of the apparently 'peripheral' territory of Wales. I am also interested in the very politics of Wakefield's intertextuality. Her literary dexterity enabled her as an apparent 'minority' figure – a middle-aged Quaker woman essentially living by her pen – to use travel literature as a highly successful form of knowledge-making for a juvenile audience, despite rarely leaving the bounds of her home. Alison Martin University of Reading
The Picturesque and the Beastly; Wales in the journals of Lady’s Companions Eliza and Millicent Bant (1806, 1808) Recent scholarship in the field of travel writing studies and in Romanticism has established that the late eighteenth century saw a transformation in the representation of Wales in writing by English travellers; changing from, as Sarah Prescott has argued, ‘a backward and uncivilised land to a place venerated for its ancient bardic culture and sublime landscapes’ (2014, 108; Constantine, 2008; Lichtenwalner, 2008). This paper considers the manuscript journals of sisters Millicent and Eliza Bant, companions to Lady Wilson, from their tour of Wales in the first decade of the nineteenth century and suggests that whilst the Bant sisters do employ newly-established Romantic formulations of landscapes in their accounts of Wales, these compete with other complex discourses. In the journals a number of unexpected and contradictory perspectives on Wales and the Welsh are proposed by Millicent and Eliza Bant; Wales is simultaneously ‘beastly’ and ‘picturesque’, a place of industry and of nature for example. The Bant sisters form part of, what James Clifford has suggested is, ‘a host of servants, helpers, companions, guides, and bearers [who] have been excluded from the role of proper travellers because of their race and class; and because theirs seemed to be a dependent status’ (Clifford,1997, 33). It is this ‘dependent status’, which I suggest is at the root of the interesting interstitial narratorial position through which both their employer, Lady Wilson and the Welsh become objects of the travelling authors’ gaze. Furthermore, this in-between status results in a rendering of the companions’ proximity to the organisation and practicalities of travel and draws attention to the challenges still encountered in the early nineteenth century by the travelling party despite Wales’s emergent tourist infrastructure. Kathryn Walchester Liverpool John Moores University
A Minority in Search of Identity: Travel Writing and the Representation of British-Jewish Women in Linda Grant’s The Cast Iron Shore and When I Lived in Modern Times When thinking about marginalised people, diasporic collectives, or individuals relegated to the periphery, the Jewish people forge ahead as they have traditionally been defined by their minority status wherever they have settled (Cheyette, 2014; Goldberg and Kopelowitz, 2012). However, the present-day literary panorama has observed that “Jewish literature is flourishing […] - the resurgence of a people still striving to be heard” (Berkman and Starkman, 1998: 1). In their attempt to unveil the mechanisms that relegate them to this minor position, many British-Jewish writers have recently created works shaped by the transnational and diasporic nature that characterises travel writing. This trend is even more noticeable in the case of women, as they “participate as ʻothersʼ in several traditions at once” (Baskin, 1994: 21), as Jews, immigrants and women. Among the increasing British-Jewish female voices problematising their identity, Linda Grant’s creations deserve pride of place as they show the mechanisms through which the relationship between self and place may open new alternatives for the (re)construction of
their liminal identities. In this paper, The Cast Iron Shore (1996) and When I Lived in Modern Times (2000) will be analysed and, although the dissimilarities between the travels represented will be pointed out ─ The Cast Iron Shore echoes the vast Jewish migration to the US while When I Lived in Modern Times shows the return to Israel after the Holocaust ─, my main hypothesis is that both use the journey as a device guiding the narrative, a motif representing the necessary breaking of boundaries for the characters to negotiate their identities, and a metaphor to claim for a renewed outlook on the role of Jewish women in society. By applying theories on the formation of Jewish identity and femininity alongside ideas on travel writing, and just as Goldberg argues that Jews always experiment “with new ways of ʻputting togetherʼ Judaism and Jewish communality” (2012: 2), I would conclude that Grant’s works prove that travel writing is a useful tool to “put together” the pieces conforming contemporary Jewish female identities.
Works Cited Baskin, Judith. R. 1994. Women of the Word: Jewish Women and Jewish Writing. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Berkman, Marsha Lee and Elaine Marcus Starkman. 1998. Contemporary Jewish Stories: Here I Am from around the World. Philadelphia and Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society. Grant, Linda. 1996. The Cast Iron Shore. London: Granta Books. ――. 2000. When I Lived in Modern Times. London: Granta Books. Cheyette, Bryan. 2014. Diasporas of the Mind: Jewish and Postcolonial Writing and the Nightmare of History. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Goldberg, Steven M. Cohen and Ezra Kopelowitz (eds). 2012. Dynamic Belonging: Contemporary Jewish Collective Identities. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Silvia Pelicier-Ortín University of Zaragoza
15.30 Te/ Tea Break
16.00 DRWM Ystafell y Cyngor / Council Chamber Panel 2a: Panel 2b: Iberian Travellers Literary Travellers
Panel 2a: Iberian Travellers Cadair / Chair: Phil Davies
‘Everything Stays the Same’: Julio Camba Travelling Spain Whereas the Galician but Madrid based journalist Julio Camba (1882-1962) acquired a long- lasting fame as a travel writer thanks to his chronicles about foreign countries published in the Spanish press and subsequently compiled in a series of volumes (Londres; Alemania; Un año en el otro mundo; Aventuras de una peseta; La ciudad automática), La rana viajera [The Travelling Frog](1920) gathers some of the articles he wrote about Spain. In this paper, I will examine Camba’s domestic travel writing, which not only provides an excellent insight into significant social and political issues at the time (with references to the rise of peripheral nationalisms, Regeneracionismo and the corrupted nature of Spanish politics), but also highlights the similarities between the Restoration period and present-day Spain. Through his characteristic humorous style and the subversion of previous tropes of travel writing, Camba creates an anti-Romantic representation of Spanish society that combines criticism of Spain’s economic stagnation and national decay with a centralist view of the country. His mockery of
Spanish politicians, his scorn towards Galician and Basque languages and his parodic take on Catalonia’s claims for autonomy shed light on the formation of Spanish centralist nationalism in the decade prior to the Civil War and its persistence in current Spain. David Miranda-Barreiro Bangor University
Everything but the squeal: A portrait of present day Galicia According to social identity theories (Hogan, 2009: 8) a group or nation can be defined through what the inhabitants think of themselves and what others consider representative of that group (i. e. in-group and out-group categories). This paper analyses the image of Galicia and its people in the travel book Everything but the Squeal. Eating the Hole Hog in Northern Spain (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), by the British journalist and writer John Barlow. Born in Britain but living in A Coruña for more than twenty years, he sets out to consume every bit of the pig that is eaten in his pork-loving adopted home. Over the course of a year, Barlow crisscrosses the region, but the food quest is merely a window onto the people who make it. He focuses on certain values, traditions and beliefs that bind the population together: language, sense of humor, lack of self-steem, emigration. However, in spite of these shared bonds, we consider this ancient culture at risk of disappearing. This threat has been clear over the last decades, when people flew a backward countryside in search of economic progress, leaving behind their language, homes, handicrafts and trades. Bárbara Álvarez Fernández Universidade de Vigo
Galician National Identity and Extraterritoriality in Diarios dun nómada (1993) by Xavier Queipo: a Geoliterary and Cartographic Approach This paper combines theories and methodologies from Comparative Literature, Spatial Humanities and Digital Humanities (Cartography and Critical GIS, specifically), as developed by authors such as Franco Moretti, Barbara Piatti and Ian N. Gregory. More precisely, this paper will provide a reading of the text Diarios dun nómada, a travelogue published in 1993 by the Galician author Xavier Queipo, in digital and cartographic terms. In order to do this, the first step will be to georeference the locations linked (sometimes with great precision) to the different entries of the text. The expected result is the visualisation of a very wide geographical and textual configuration, a literally geosymbolic Atlantic space. Starting from this point, the paper will carry out a geoliterary and qualitative analysis of the cultural issues and items mentioned in those entries: authors, literary works, emotions and subjective judgements about spaces and locations… The main lines of this analysis will be travel writing, mobilities and the travelogue as genre, the symbolic making of Galician national identity and the importance of (extra)territoriality and linguistic diversity in Xavier Queipo’s work. Enrique Santos Unamuno Universidad de Extremadura
Panel 2b: Literary Travellers Cadair / Chair: Lorna MacBean
The Chivalrous Nation: Travel and Ideological Exchange in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight The Middle Ages saw alliterative poetic tradition flourish across the British Isles, though not in a singular, unified form. Variations in the form erupted depending upon geographical, cultural, and political variables and many texts reveal a sense of strong regional pride. The theme of nationalism also became prominent as the British Isles began to define which geographical areas were parts of its nation. While some scholars believe these two takes can be mutually exclusive, I argue that the Alliterative Revival is not strictly indicative of regional and local literary pride or of thematic nationalistic fervor. Rather, the poetry of this Revival contributes many voices to an overarching national narrative through the alliterative style. This presentation intends to examine Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the most defining examples of the alliterative resurgence, and the instances of travel and ideological exchange presented in the poem. Written in a North Midlands dialect, several moments in the poem provide commentary on relations between the royal court of Richard II and the provinces of the North West Midlands. While the poem reveals moments of regional pride, I intend to argue that through the use of the alliterative style and the rhetorical execution of Sir Gawain’s final punishment, this poem reveals a commentary on the overarching English national identity, giving voice to minority groups. Sir Gawain’s travels lead him through Wales and North West England, allowing him to experience these traditions and lifestyles which differ from the royal tradition he is used to. By examining the poetic style, language, and certain key scenes in which ideological exchange occurs between minority and majority cultures, this presentation will demonstrate how the regional pride presented in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight contributes to a commentary on how the court should treat its minority groups and gentry. Ruth Oldman Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Traversing Across Imagined Lands: Magic Realism and ‘Minority’ Culture While in some ways Magic Realism has become a ubiquitous term, to describe various contemporary works, yet a certain ambiguity surrounds it. I will be focusing on three magic realist novels within British Commonwealth writing. These works are structured around multiple layers of reality. Like many modernist movements, however, magic realism rejects nineteenth-century positivism, the privileging of science and empiricism, returning instead to mythologies, folklore and mysticism. This in no way represents an abandonment of history; in fact, the representation of historical conflict is central to magic realist prose, and I would argue that in contemporary literature magic realism presents a way of restoring a historical dimension to the post-modern novel. The disconcerting multiplicity of realities in magic realism emphasizes rather than denies the historical dimension of these narratives. The exploration of the quotidian in early magic realism increasingly gives way to the representation of conflict, which is often but not exclusively generated by a crisis of national/cultural identity resulting from the overlap of several layers of history and culture within a given geographic area.
In this paper I will be exploring Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Peter Carey’s The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, and Richard Flanagan’s Death of a River Guide. All three works explore travel, both in real and also imagined, magical, or dystopian lands. The central characters of the works are dealing with a feeling of displacement from their homes, families, and countries. They must learn to use their ‘minority’ status in order to challenge the hegemonic structures at work in their lives. Language plays an equally important role in each work, and in conjunction with travel, I will attempt to show the importance that both have within the genre of Magic Realism, and in particular, the works from Rushdie, Carey, and Flanagan. Amy L. Klemm Indiana University of Pennsylvania
“A language of wet stones and mists”: A Caribbean Poet as Traveller through England and Wales My paper examines several poems in which Derek Walcott writes about England and Wales from the autobiographic viewpoint of the travelling Caribbean poet. The reading I propose is part of a larger project on representations of Europe in Walcott’s poetry, but in their focus on England and Wales these poems crystalise two particularly complex and suggestive, yet very different, responses to the manifold of place, history and language evoked by the landscapes he moves through. Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of littérature mineure allows me to speak about Walcott as a “minority writer”. His position as a West Indian poet means he is both outside the imperial, majority culture and, of necessity, in its language, which he has reterritorialised in his long endeavour to use it for articulating a post-colonial, specifically Caribbean poetics. In their engagement with Welsh and English “Elsewhere”, his poems inevitably participate in the transvaluation of the relationship between centre and periphery (or peripheries), which marked the most significant poetry written in English after WWII. In discussing “English” poems from Midsummer (1984) I will argue that, while there is some recognition of vital bonds with England, Walcott’s voyage never becomes a return to the wellspring of his identity, as some critics seem to imply. His representation of England also qualifies the view of Walcott as a cosmopolitan poet, equally at home in different places. I then proceed to discuss Walcott’s “Wales” (The Fortunate Traveller, 1981) as an instance of Édouard Glissant’s relation. Wales fascinates Walcott both because of its stratified history and long poetic tradition – both things that the Caribbean manifestly lacks – and because of the correspondences between it and Walcott’s islands. These quicken his imagination and allow for a productive identification that ultimately complicates and deepens his encounter with Europe. Marija Bergam University of Geneva
17.30 Swper / Dinner
19.00 DRWM Sgwrs rhwng Kirmen Uribe a Ned Thomas
A Talk with Kirmen Uribe and Ned Thomas
Dydd Mawrth, 15 Medi 2015 Tuesday, 15 September 2015
10.00 DRWM Panel 3: Involuntary Travellers
Panel 3: Involuntary Travellers Cadair / Chair: Kathryn Jones
Exile meets minority: chevalier La Tocnaye’s "promenades" French travel literature doesn't express much interest in discovering the "other nations" of the BritishIsles until the last decade of the Ancien Régime. Most earlier examples are either cases of “mind travel” (Coulon’s guide from 1654), cases of involuntary travel (La Boullaye le Gouz in Ireland), or remain exceptional (Jouvin de Rochefort’s 1670 guide). From the 1780ies, linked partly to the emergence of the Ossian reference, Celtic cultures grow in importance, and the practice of the “tour des trois royaumes” becomes fashionable. The chevelier La Tocnaye belongs, in some respects, to this development, but also holds a special place. This young aristocrat, desperate to shake off the inactivity of life as an exile, turns his experience into travel, in order to “survive” temporary hardship: survive financially, intellectually, even physically. Having little money but an almost unlimited amount of time, he decides to walk around the whole of Britain; he will later undertake further walks in Norway and Scandinavia. During his walks, he grows increasingly critical of the English, and will systematically side with the local population; in particular the Scottish, with whom he stays for over two years. At every point of his travel, he creates counter-narratives to well-known English narratives of the territory he travels through. He positions himself against Johnson in Scotland; reports cheerfully about the “Twiss pots” in Ireland; and uses his travel to Norway to refute fellow traveller Mary Wollstonecraft at every level: facts, writing and underlying ideology. This paper investigates whether this act of creating counter-narratives against a dominating discourse can be seen as an act of modernity. We also investigate his “program of travel”, which suggests only exiles are in a position to take on the role of facilitator between cultures. Gabor Gelleri Aberystwyth University
German Prisoners of War in Wales In the limited canon of research on Wales during the Second World War, German POWs as European travellers to Wales are mentioned, although there is no in depth analysis of their experience. Although their ‘travels’ to Wales were not voluntary, the writings and experiences of these POWs provide us with a fresh set of perspectives on Wales, the Welsh and Welsh society and culture. Drawing on a range of sources, this paper will analyse the experiences of German POWs in Wales during, and after, the Second World War. These sources include memoirs, personal accounts and oral history interviews. This paper will also explore prisoner attitudes to Wales whilst offering a unique perspective of Wales from the viewpoint of foreign captives. The paper will seek to ascertain what impressions of Wales were left in the POW’s memories and which perceptions of an enemy were formed? To what extent did these perceptions change over time and with the ending of the war? In answering these questions it will be possible to assess the degree to which process of integration into the local community too place (and if so how?) In sum, this paper will make a significant contribution to the historiography of European travel writing and Wales. Arddun Arwyn Aberystwyth University
11.00 Coffi / Coffee Break
11.30 DRWM Ystafell y Cyngor / Council Chamber Panel 4a: Panel 4b: Western Travellers Minorities of the Imaginary
Panel 4a: Western Travellers Cadair / Chair: Carol Tully
Complex Encounters: Irish-language travel writers and the cultural ‘other’ Given that Ireland has never had a dominant position in Europe and was not involved in leading the imperial expansion that contributed to the production of much international travel literature from the sixteenth century onwards, it is, perhaps, not surprising that the evolution of Irish-language travel literature has been very different to that of travel literature in the major world languages such as English, French and Spanish. It is only in more recent years, for example, that Irish-language literature has witnessed a transition from emigration literature to travel literature, with Irish-language writers now recounting journeys they have undertaken for leisure purposes. As a result, it could also be anticipated that Irish-language travel writers will engage differently with the peoples and places that they visit than many of the travellers from major world powers who came before them as they could empathize with the peoples of other small nations and with those who may have experienced similar linguistic and cultural attrition to themselves. Thus by looking at the works of three Irish-language travel writers - Manchán Magan, Gabriel Rosenstock and Cathal Ó Searcaigh - this paper aims to explore the encounters between Irish-language travel writers and foreign peoples and places. It will investigate the attempts made by these writers to distance themselves from cultural, political and economic hegemony of Western powers but it will also highlight the hugely complex positioning of Irish-language travel writers; not only are they speakers of a minoritised language who come from a country that has itself experienced colonization, but they are also relatively wealthy travellers from a developed country in Western Europe. This unstable positioning can, therefore, result in encounters that are fraught with ethical dilemmas for Irish-language travel writers. Overall, this study of Irish-language travel narratives will illustrate the often ambivalent positionings of Western travellers who come from ‘minority’ cultures or from minority / minoritised language backgrounds, who, despite their attempts to detach themselves from hierarchical encounters, often find it difficult to escape the asymmetrical power relations that have been entrenched in the encounters between Western travellers and the non-Western ‘other’ for centuries. Eimear Kennedy Queen’s University Belfast
Highlanders in West Africa In the early nineteenth century, a group of schoolmates from Elgin in Moray staffed the station at Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast of Africa. They were all the sons of Presbyterian ministers and all but one were graduates of one of Aberdeen’s two universities and so they, and their fathers, were very much influenced by the teaching of James Beattie, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic at Marischal College. As a proponent of the Scottish Enlightenment, Beattie was an early abolitionist who attacked David Hume’s racist ideology and influenced the thinking of William Wilberforce who was just beginning his career. The Elgin men were obliged to seek work overseas because of the Highland Clearances and, because they came from beyond the Highland line (until recently a tribal land with chieftains whose first language was not English), they could relate to the indigenous population of West Africa. The slave trade had only just been abolished and the merchants on the Gold Coast needed to find new exports to replace human trafficking. The fathers of the Elgin men, as local church ministers, each one writing about his own parish, had been involved in putting together the First Statistical Account of Scotland, a survey of the economy of Scotland during and on the eve of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. A similar Enlightenment outlook influenced the accounts of the Gold Coast in terms of finding ‘legitimate’ trade goods. It was not an imperialist land-grab; it was an attempt to establish new British trade links to replace the transatlantic slave trade. One of the Elgin men, Brodie Cruikshank, secretary of the merchant company, wrote up and published his observations in a travel book entitled Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast of Africa, which is in effect a statistical account of the area. Julie Watt Independent Scholar
Identity? Politics: William Griffith’s African Adventure In 1892 a series of letters appeared in the Carnarvon-based newspaper Y Genedl Gymreig written by a man called William Griffith to his brother. They describe the author’s travels from Kimberley in South Africa to Fort Salisbury in Mashonaland (present-day Harare, Zimbabwe) in the service of his work as a gold prospector for the British South Africa Company under the directorship of Cecil Rhodes. Griffith’s account must have mustered some interest, as newspaper advertisements indicate that he was in demand as a speaker, and the collected edition of his letters was published twice. It is tempting to use accounts such as Griffith’s to attempt to identify a minority-language travel-writing aesthetic, different from the colonialist discourse of most majority-language travel writing of the period. It is difficult to accept that a member of a minority culture, presumably having experienced the denigration of his own language and history, might participate in the same action, and tempting to search for clues of a greater acceptance of minority cultures, and a greater understanding of their plight. In the case of William Griffith, such a search would be in vain. There is no evidence that Griffith identified with the African cultures he encountered. While he has many positive things to say about the individual Africans he encounters, much of this is familiar rhetoric, aimed at shaming the audience at home into better behaviour by showing up the natural good habits of the noble savage, and is familiar from majority-language travel writing of the period. This lack of sympathy may be due to the fact that although Griffith identified as Welsh, there is no indication that he considered this to be a minority identity, or an identity in any way incompatible with his full participation in the colonialist activities of the British South Africa Company. Diana Luft Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
Panel 4b: Minorities of the Imaginary: The Culture of Travel Writing across Early Modern Scotland Cadair / Chair: Linus Band-Dijkstra
‘Folk’ celebration? Thomas St. Serfe’s ‘The Prince of Tartaria, his Voyage to Cowper in Fife’ I will be looking at a little-studied work by the Scottish pamphleteer Thomas St. Serfe. ‘The Prince of Tartaria’ details the journey of a fictive foreign prince through Restoration Scotland. St. Serfe directs his readership towards a utopic version of post-Restoration Scotland that is based on his royalist beliefs. My paper will enquire into how St. Serfe makes use of marginalised culture to reinforce the cultural hegemony in the minds of his readers. As the Tartarian prince travels through Scotland, the local folk culture that he encounters and partakes in is celebrated. However, this folk celebration is ultimately directed towards the royalist celebration that is the narrative’s final scene. I will consider the tensions between the official and the unofficial, the peripheral and the hegemonic in this text. St. Serfe implements the all-encompassing equalising laughter of folk festivity to re-establish a stable, hierarchized Scotland in the imaginations of St. Serfe’s readers. My paper will draw attention to how folk culture can be (ab)used as a means of reproducing and reinforcing cultural hegemony. Jessica Reid University of Glasgow
A Discription, A journey and a Prophecy: Scottophobia in English Literature, 1626-1763 This paper will examine three descriptive accounts of Scotland, from three writers, spanning two centuries, each employing different forms that show development from political invective to travelogue to poetry: A Discription of Scotland (disputed authorship) (1626), Edward Ward’s (satirist, 1667-1731) A Journey to Scotland (1699) and Charles Churchill’s (poet, 1732- 1764) The Prophecy of Famine: A Scots Pastoral (1763). Though separated by time and form the texts share similar concerns, themes, ideology and Scottophobia. Themes include descriptions of populace, topography, agricultural and technological backwardness, barrenness, disease, culture, food, natural resources, origins and religion. Moreover, the texts belong to specific political moments and comment on and reflect shifting dynamics in the Anglo-Scottish relationship. A Discription appears shortly after the Union of Crowns, A journey is published prior to the Act of Union and during Scotland’s ultimately disastrous solo colonial project in Darien, while The Prophecy of Famine affords post-union insight into how the English, in keeping with the previous texts, perceived their Scottish partners as a minority culture, but through the additional framework of the generally unwelcome influx of the perceived minority culture into England. Christopher McMillan University of Glasgow
White Man Writing: Language of Colonisation in the writings of William Lithgow (1582-1645) Since Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ seminal work ‘Epistemologies of the South’, the term ‘epistemicide’ has become a hammer in the tool box of decolonisation theory. This paper takes a linguistic approach to de Sousa Santos’s concept and applies it to the writings of William Lithgow (1582-1645). Writing at the beginning of the seventeenth century and in Scotland’s awakening to colonial projects, William Lithgow’s travelogues and poetry provide a unique window into what Dr Kirsten Sandrock has termed the ‘Scottish colonial imaginary’. Looking at how Lithgow’s reality is construed in metaphor and imagery, this paper begins to piece together a hermeneutic of this imaginary. By examining instances where Lithgow dictates/narrates the realities of marginalised people, we begin to see a familiar Western epistemology and can begin to pick apart the particular cognitive injustices which Lithgow pedals. Lorna McBean University of Glasgow
13.00 Cinio / Lunch
14.00 DRWM Ystafell y Cyngor / Council Chamber Panel 5a: Panel 5b: Purposeful Travellers Travellers and Commodities
Panel 5a: Purposeful Travellers Cadair / Chair: Rita Singer
German Scholars in Wales, c.1840–c.1880: Friedrich Carl Meyer This paper considers a group of German-language visitors whose previous connections with Wales and academic training deeply influenced their travel routes and cultural outputs, thereby potentially subverting both the image of Wales as romantically ‘Celtic’ and the perceived centre-periphery relationship between the Celtic countries and the British state. Reviewing the general characteristics of this group of travellers, among them historian and politician Baron Christian von Bunsen, Sanskrit Professor Max Müller and publisher Georg Saurwein, the analysis focuses on the Celtic scholar and diplomat Friedrich Carl Meyer (†1885). Having won an international essay competition at the Welsh-founded, but internationally renowned, Abergavenny Eisteddfod in 1842, Meyer travelled Wales in 1844–5, taking a route less determined by notions of the picturesque, the sublime or the ‘Celtic’, but by the people he wished to visit and the libraries he desired to consult. His continued engagement with the country’s culture and its place in British politics is apparent from his correspondence with prominent Welshmen and -women, like Lady Augusta Hall, and the historians Thomas Price and Thomas Stephens. Appointed ‘German Secretary and Librarian’ to Prince Albert at Windsor in 1847, he contributed to subscriptions for cultural institutions in Wales, lectured on the Welsh language in Oxford and equipped the royal library with a canon of ‘peripheral’ Celtic literature, thus furthering an appreciation of Welsh culture at the heart of the British Empire at a time when it was viewed with suspicion by the (colonial) establishment. Marion Löffler Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
Rambles and Studies of the United States Consul in south Wales The purpose for Wirt Sikes’s time in Wales was profession, not leisure. Sikes served as United States consul to Cardiff from 1876 to 1883, during which time he frequently enjoyed ‘rambles’ throughout south Wales. Already a noted writer in the U.S., Sikes continued his literary career alongside his diplomatic one, utilizing his jaunts to contribute articles on various Welsh topics to American periodicals. Some of these articles were reprinted for a British readership in 1881 as Rambles and Studies in old south Wales. In the introduction to this work, Sikes presented himself as correcting American and English ignorance concerning the region. However, his work had meaning and motivation beyond polite ethno-geographical curiosity. Throughout his Welsh writing, Sikes was keen to compare Wales to the United States. While this arose in part from his own nationality and a desire to make his subject palatable to his audience, it was also motivated by his diplomatic position. As consul in Cardiff, Sikes was responsible for reporting on and fostering American-Welsh trade and social relations, giving him a keen interest in their promotion. This was heightened by his status as consul to a ‘non- state’ nation. He encourages travel to Wales, as well as praising of both Welsh and American goods. In earlier writings, Sikes had focused on socio-economic issues, particularly the plight of impoverished women and the evils of drink. These concerns appear in his Welsh writings, and, particularly with temperance, he often portrayed Wales as an ideal. Thus, while Sikes’s work superficially displays literary conventions which reinforce a view of Wales as ‘peripheral’, taken in wider contexts, it constructs Wales as a cultural and economic ‘centre’, motivated by Sikes’s professional and social interests. Adam N. Coward Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
Panel 5b: Travellers and Commodities Cadair / Chair: Mary-Ann Constantine
Yr Ymwelwydd Tymhorol o Lydaw Dechreuodd y gwerthwyr winwns o Lydaw, a elwid ar lafar gwlad yn Sioni Winwns, ymweld â Phrydain mor bell yn ôl ag 1828. Cyrhaeddodd eu masnach eI ben-llanw ym 1931 pan oedd o leiaf 1500 yn ymadael ag ardaloedd Rosko a Kastell Paol i dreulio chwe mis yn gwerthu eu winwns unigryw ledled Prydain. Yr oedd Cymru yn bwysig yn y stori gan fod canran uchel ohonyn nhw – o ystyried y boblogaeth – yn dod yma. Mae lle i gredu fod hyn oherwydd y cysylltiad ieithyddol gyda gweithwyr cyffredin uniaith Lydaweg yn dod wyneb yn wyneb â Chymry, yn arbennig gwragedd tŷ, oedd fwy neu lai yn uniaith Gymraeg. Ni adawsant gorff o lenyddiaeth ar eu holau, heblaw am yr hyn â gofnodwyd mewn cyfweliadau gyda nhw gan eraill. Ymhlith y cofnodwyr hynny mae Gwyn Griffiths a ddechreuodd ymchwilio i’w hanes ddiwedd y 70au pan oedd y fasnach dymhorol yn dirwyd tua’i therfyn. Gwnaeth lawer o’i ymchwil yn Llydaw yn gwrando ar atgofion dynion – a menywod – oedd bellach wedi ymddeol ar ôl treulio hanner oes yn gwerthu winwns ym Mhrydain. Dull y Sionis oedd dychwelyd i’r un dref neu ddinas flwyddyn ar ôl blwyddyn a gan i lawer ohonyn nhw fod yn ymwelwyr cyson a’n gwlad, rai dros hanner canrif a mwy, daethant i adnabod eu hardaloedd yn dda a phrofi fod ganddyn nhw wybodaeth arbennig o hanes ac arferion y mannau hynny. Hyd yn oed yn achos Sionis na fuont erioed yng Nghymru gwelwyd
eu bod yn gwybod llawer am Gymru a wedi dysgu rhywfaint o Gymraeg ymysg Cymry alltud. Bu’r cyswllt iaith yn fodd i dynnu dwy garfan o’r dosbarth gweithiol at ei gilydd. Dysgodd Jean Le Roux fu’n gwerthu ei winwns yn Llundain dipyn o Gymraeg gyda’r gwerthwyr llaeth o Geredigion. Bu gallu’r Sionis i gyfathrebu’n rhwydd yn y Gymraeg yn fodd i gryfhau’r myth fod y Gymraeg a’r Llydaweg bron yn union yr un fath. Gwyn Griffiths Independent Scholar
‘Guidebook Gazes’: Wales Through Dutch, German and French Eyes, 1990- 2010 Despite the advent of devolution in 1997, Wales is still largely ‘invisible’ overseas, and is often conflated with England or overlooked altogether (Hellegouarc’h-Bryce 2009; Morgan and Pritchard 2005). Guidebooks play an important role in increasing the visibility of a nation, as they introduce the country to potential visitors and create images prior to travelling. However, they also tend to reinforce stereotypes and create ‘romantic fictions’ (Mahn 2008). This paper examines the representation of Wales in French, German and Dutch guidebooks between 1990 and 2010 and consequently elucidates the cultural and political recognition of Wales in these continental texts. The depiction of Wales as a distinct entity on an administrative, or rather on a cultural and linguistic level will be discussed, as well as the commonalities and differences between the Dutch, French and German views. By focussing on the guidebooks’ introductory chapters and sections about Welsh culture and language, the paper investigates the engagement of these guidebooks with Wales as a devolved ‘minority’. The primary material will consist of well-known series such as Marco Polo and Guide du Routard as well as lesser-known printed guidebooks in order to provide a broader overview of the used discourse. On the one hand, it will be argued that the guides increase Wales’s visibility, simply by the fact that the country has become a consumable object of the ‘tourist gaze’. On the other hand, the guidebooks also present Wales as a mystified Other. By examining guidebooks before and after devolution, the paper discusses whether Wales’s visibility as a distinct nation has indeed increased or not. It will be argued that although devolution was a milestone for Wales on both a national as well as international level, the guidebooks do not necessarily reflect this. Anna-Lou Dijkstra Swansea University Immobile travel: The "postcard-literature” in Yugoslavia In Thomas Faist’s study published in 2013 the cultural situation of the Hungarian minorities is compared to the situation of the migrant groups: in both cases we can examine transnational ties. This parallel reinterprets the cultural characterization of the minorities’ identity, and also the e/migrant researches. E/migration is tightly connected to travelling, however the Hungarian minorities found themselves in another state, without changing their location – because of a political decision. The lack of travel and the “irregular” travel became the central topics of the literature in Vojvodina. In my presentation I will present the literary effects of these developments, and I will define a special local literary solution. During/after the fall of Yugoslavia the passport of the non-existent state became important basic symbol in the local literature – independently of the nationality. The new bureaucratic
regulations basically influenced the possibility of travel. These circumstances established a paradoxical image in the literature like "the arrival to nowhere" or "trip in one place". In reality the escape meant the travel. In the literature of the minorities in Vojvodina developed a specific literary historical writer solution. By my definition this is called "postcard- literature". This refers to the complementary (and not only illustrative) relationship between the informative text and picture. In these works postcard is not only an important motif, but also the place of the travel. The person who receives the postcard also can start an imaginary journey. These passages are a specific realization of the "image and geo narrative". The following writers can be mentioned: Vedrana Rudan, Dubravka Ugrešić, Ildikó Lovas, Nándor Gion etc. The name of the solution refers not (only) to the shortness of the text: these passages can be examined by interdisciplinary aspects. This solution is in close contact with other literary genres, such as the diary, the autobiography or memoir. Melinda Szarvas University of Jyväskylä 15.30 Te / Tea Break
16.00 DRWM – Prif Ddarlith / Keynote Lecture: Michael Cronin ‘Minority Reports: Travel, Language and the Politics of Microspection’ Chair: Charles Forsdick
19.30 Cinio’r Gynhadledd / Conference Dinner: Pier Brasserie
Dydd Mercher, 16 Medi 2015 Wednesday, 16 September 2015
9.30 Amgueddfa Ceredigion Museum Arddangosfa ‘EwrOlwg: Cymru drwy Lygaid Ymwelwyr o Ewrop, 1750–2015’ Exhibition ‘EuroVisions: Wales through the Eyes of European Visitors, 1750–2015’
10.00 Panel 6: Travellers and Material Culture
Panel 6: Travellers and Material Culture Cadair / Chair: Heather Williams
Welsh Language and Bilingual Provision in Tourism in Wales Culture, including language, is a key differentiator between tourism destinations and thus potentially an important asset in destination marketing and creating a ‘sense of place’. While some visitors choose a destination primarily for its physical facilities, increasingly tourists wish to experience aspects of local culture (e.g. local food, local traditions) and most visitors undertake some form of ‘cultural’ activity (e.g. attending a festival or visiting a castle) even if this is incidental rather than their primary reason for visiting a destination. Research suggests a positive shift in attitude towards local cultures (and languages), which form part of the essential make-up of a travel destination. However, visitors may encounter difficulty in engaging with local culture for a range of reasons, including: Relative invisibility of local cultures due to historic political hegemony Mediation of the minority culture via a majority language and world-view A tendency among some tourism businesses to this type of provision as unnecessary and an additional cost A lack of opportunities for visitors to engage meaningfully with the local culture and language In the context of the Welsh Government’s strategy for a bilingual Wales, Visit Wales is seeking to actively promote and encourage the use of Welsh and bilingualism in the tourism industry as well as utilising the Welsh language in its own marketing communications. This paper considers some of the implications and practicalities of this provision. With reference to various theoretical perspectives and in the light of the experience of other bilingual destinations, the issues and themes explored include: The nature and growth of cultural tourism Linguistic function and domains of use Industry and destination marketing perspectives Skills needs Consumer perceptions, demand and barriers Accessibility of culture Consumerisation, commodification and authenticity Robert Lewis Tourism Research, Welsh Government
Difference and Decorum: Addressing Dress in Published Travelogues Costume (as an aspect of manners and customs) was a feature that many eighteenth and nineteenth-century visitors to Wales felt duty-bound to comment upon. The dress historian expects to find published travelogues a mine of information, but instead they prove to be a minefield, full of ‘false inferences and misstated facts’ (as Mary Morgan pointed out in her account published in 1795). Recent writers have tended to steer clear of the subject of clothing in their discussions of Welsh tourism. In this paper I wish to focus squarely on the issue of when, how and why dress is (or is not) mentioned in travelogues [c1780-1880]. Through defining terms and concepts specific to clothing it is hoped that modern readers will gain deeper insights into the forms, functions and complex value systems that clothing embodied for the original writers and readers of travelogues. Ideas of decorum – relating to dress worn in life, and ideas of literary decorum, relating to when and why details of dress are recorded in travelogues, are a key aspect of this paper. Dress was often seen as a marker of difference – embodying distinctions in class and gender, as well as national and regional identities. For many travellers what to wear - and what not to wear - was a source of anxiety. As the new breed of pedestrian tourist emerged, what to carry, and how to carry one’s self, became a source of interest and amusement as new forms of clothing had to be adopted or adapted to suit the unforgiving Welsh climate and terrain. Distinctions between dress and drapery, fashionable and folk dress, clothing and ‘costume’ will be discussed with a view to identifying avenues of further enquiry in this expanding field of study. Jacqui Ansell Christie's Education
11.00 Dychwelyd i Lyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / Return to the National Library of Wales
12.00 DRWM Panel 7: Curious Travellers
Panel 7: Curious Travellers Cadair / Chair: Dafydd Johnston
‘[B]leak and desolate as anything I have seen in Scotland’: Mary Brunton on the home tour Presenting some early findings from the ‘Curious Travellers’ research project, this paper introduces Mary Brunton’s posthumously-published 1815 tour of England and Wales. Brunton (1778-1818), a novelist, was from the Orkney Islands, moving to Edinburgh on her marriage in 1798. She kept the horizons of her Scottish homeland very much in view as she travelled through England and Wales in 1815, using Scotland as a gauge against which to measure the new people, industries, and landscapes she encountered on her tour. Brunton’s transperipheral perspective on the domestic tour is a central feature of this text, but it’s also just one element of the 1815 tour’s layered and miscellaneous intellectual landscape. This paper suggests that three major, interconnected themes flow through this text. First, the tour is a space for empirical observation and the construction of knowledge (as for example in Brunton’s descriptions of porcelain manufacturing in the Midlands). Second, it’s a space for
aesthetic, social, and political critique, often framed in comparative terms: the virtues of Tintern Abbey versus Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire; the relative poverties of Welsh and English cottagers; the parallel properties, physical and moral, of Llangollen and the Scottish Highlands. Finally, it’s a record of the imagination on the move, creatively braiding topographical reportage, ethnographic and economic profiling, scientific curiosity, and moral or ideological reflection by means of a highly literary register perhaps not surprising given Brunton’s career as a novelist. Elizabeth Edwards Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
‘To find out all its beauties, a man must travel on foot’: Catherine Hutton’s explorations of Wales Catherine Hutton (1756-1846) was a Birmingham-based novelist and prolific letter-writer, a friend (and fellow Unitarian) of Joseph Priestley, and the daughter of Birmingham’s ‘first historian’, the bookseller William Hutton. She was also a keen traveller within the British Isles, and recorded her tours in letters and narratives, some published in journals like the Monthly Magazine, others woven into the plots of her novels. She is a sharp observer of social conditions, and a witty commentator on the foibles of those she encounters; the fact that (unlike many coach-bound lady tourists of her time) she was often prepared to ride on horseback or even walk gives her accounts considerable vigour. With her father, Catherine Hutton visited Wales several times, first in 1787 and then in the period 1796-1800: the respective accounts of their experiences (different genders, different generations) make interesting comparative reading, and form the basis of this paper. But the Huttons’ responses to the Welsh landscape, language and people, will also be situated both in the very particular tourist relationship that develops in this period between the Midlands and Wales, as well as in the broader context of the domestic tour’s ‘rediscovery’ of the non-English-speaking peripheries, and the implications this has for writing the history, or histories, of different parts of Britain. Mary-Ann Constantine Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
13.00 Casgliadau / Closing Remarks
Map Aberystwyth
Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru National Library of Wales
Amgueddfa Ceredigion Ceredigion Museum
Pier: Brasserie