On Friday the Portland Center for Public Humanities asked if Welsh writing in English should be taught as a separate course or module in U.S. universities.
This and other questions were addressed at Friday’s event, titled “Culture Wars. Other Voices in British Literature.” The event featured keynote speaker Dr. Tracy Prince and a panel of Welsh writers, including Mike Jenkins, Chris Keil, Phil Rowlands and Sarah Woodbury, as well as editor Ceri Shaw. The Oregon Welsh Festival Chorus opened the event by performing “Eli Jenkins’ Prayer” and the Welsh national anthem.
Wales is a country that, along with Scotland, England and Northern Ireland, is part of the United Kingdom. According to panelist Sarah Woodbury, the Welsh have been historically oppressed by the English. Woodbury went on to explain that Edward I of England captured Wales in 1282 and held on to the territory for hundreds of years, losing it to rebellion in the 15th century. At that point, Wales regained independence for a few decades, until the country was once again incorporated into the English legal system.
Speakers at the event suggested that the English subjugation of Wales continues today and that English literature unfairly obscures Welsh literature. They also argued that Welsh literature deserves its own course in university literature programs.
Although Prince suggested Welsh literature be included in British literature classes, as long as the conflict is emphasized, the Welsh panelists argued that Welsh literature deserves its own separate course.
“We don’t need to be looking just at England all the time,” said panelist Mike Jenkins. “We have writers who, in all genres, belong on the world stage.”
“In a perfect world, that would be great,” Prince said, “but it’s more realistic to have [Welsh literature] taught in British literature courses.” She explained that there aren’t enough Welsh literature experts to make the field its own course in public university systems in the U.S. While Prince advocates the inclusion of Welsh authors within British literature courses, she stresses that the historic conflict between Wales and England, as well as their stark differences in identity, be strongly emphasized.
In her book, Culture Wars in British Literature: Multiculturalism and National Identity, Prince looks at attitudes surrounding Welsh literature in relation to English literature.
In that sense, Prince identifies an idea of “homegrown” English literature, a term she attributes to the English novelist Pat Barker. The label is used to describe white, Anglo-Saxon English writers and is meant, as Prince suggests, to create a sense of being more legitimately English. She identified a defensiveness among English writers who, as she suggested, “talk of feeling neglected and besieged,” or like their literary territory is shrinking.
Prize anxiety
To explore this, Prince examined the Booker Prize. The Booker is a literary award based in England which, according to the prize foundation’s website, “aims to promote the finest in fiction by rewarding the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.”
Conflict surrounding the Booker Prize, Prince said, offers insight into a common attitude among Anglo-English authors, which can be summed up by the question, “Why are there so few British authors getting the Booker?” Prince suggests that “the term ‘British’ is often really code for Anglo-English.”
In her chapter “Xenophobia and the Booker Prize,” Prince cites English author A.S. Byatt for contributing to an exclusionary illusion that the Booker Prize is designed to represent only pure “Britishness” and not, as Byatt describes them, those “people from elsewhere.”
According to panelist Phil Rowlands, the English imposed the term “Welsh” on a people who wanted to call themselves Cymry (pronounced kam-ree), meaning “fellowship.” The word “Wales” comes from the Old English “wealh,” which translates literally, as “foreigner” or “stranger.”
Rowlands thinks this distinction is unfair and applied unevenly.
“It’s a huge frustration,” he said. “We’re so different from [the English] and yet we get lumped with them all the time.
“We’re a country reinventing itself,” said Jenkins, one of the Welsh writers on the panel. Panelists believe that Wales will contribute a great deal to world literature, and they argue that a good starting place for highlighting the Welsh voice is in universities in the U.S.
Events put on by the PCPH are “always free and open to the public,” said director of PCPH Michael Clark. “That’s something we’re sticking to.”
Check out their website (http://www.pdx.edu/public-humanities/) for more information and a list of future events.
