Old and Middle Breton Literature
Breton literature can be categorised into an Old Breton period, from the 5th to 11th century; and a Middle Breton period, up to the 17th century. The period break is marked by the Norman invasions of the 10th and 11th centuries which triggered an exodus out of Brittany. Many Old Breton extant words are glosses in Latin manuscripts from the 9th and 10th centuries, now scattered in libraries and collections throughout Europe. It is likely there was a highly developed oral tradition during the Old Breton period. And on the evidence of Breton names, it would appear that Old Breton literature inspired much of Arthurian literature, the story of Tristan and Iseult and the romances of Chrétien de Troyes.
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“We who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told:”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“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.”
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—André Breton (1896–1966)
“As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made the gradual and conscious expression of his personality in literature the aim of his life, has no right to suppress himself any carefully considered work which seemed good enough when it was written. Suppression, if it is deserved, will come rapidly enough from the same causes that suppress the unworthy members of a man’s family.”
—J.M. (John Millington)