Eighteenth Century
In the 18th century the trend in favour of religious literature continued and grew even stronger as Nonconformism began to take hold of Wales. The Welsh Methodist revival, initially led by Howell Harris and Daniel Rowland, produced not only sermons and religious tracts, but also hymns and poetry by William Williams Pantycelyn, Ann Griffiths and others. The Morris brothers of Anglesey were leading figures in the establishment of the London Welsh societies, and their letters to one another are an important record of the time. The activities of the London Welshmen helped ensure that Wales retained some kind of profile within Britain as a whole.
The activities of a number of individuals, including Thomas Jones of Corwen and the Glamorgan stonemason and man of letters, Iolo Morganwg, led to the revival of the National Eisteddfod of Wales and the invention of many of the traditions which surround it today. Although Iolo is sometimes called a charlatan because so many of his discoveries were based on pure myth, he was also an inveterate collector of old manuscripts and thereby did perform a service without which Welsh literature would have been the poorer. Some of the Welsh gentry continued to patronise bards, but this practice was gradually dying out.
Read more about this topic: Welsh-language Literature
Famous quotes related to eighteenth century:
“F.R. Leavis’s ‘eat up your broccoli’ approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy. If reading a novel—for the eighteenth century reader, the most frivolous of diversions—did not, by the middle of the twentieth century, make you a better person in some way, then you might as well flush the offending volume down the toilet, which was by far the best place for the undigested excreta of dubious nourishment.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Our age is pre-eminently the age of sympathy, as the eighteenth century was the age of reason. Our ideal men and women are they, whose sympathies have had the widest culture, whose aims do not end with self, whose philanthropy, though centrifugal, reaches around the globe.”
—Frances E. Willard 1839–1898, U.S. president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1879-1891, author, activist. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 137-40 (January 1887)