Translations
During her time in Wales, Guest learned Welsh and associated with literary scholars, including Thomas Price, Villemarqué, Judge Bosanquet, and Gwallter Mechain, who encouraged her in her work. She translated several medieval songs and poems, and eventually the Mabinogion, which was an immediate success. The name Mabinogion for these stories begins with Guest; the word Mabinogi technically applies to only the first four tales, known as the Four Branches of the Mabinogi. One manuscript contains the word mabynnogyon, which she took for a plural and applied to the collection as a whole.
The tales of the Mabinogion had been summarized in William Owen Pughe's Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, and Pughe had completed a translation of the tales which was left unpublished at his death in 1835. Guest did not rely on Pughe's translations, though she did use a Welsh dictionary Pughe had completed in 1803. Her Mabinogion became the first translation of the material to be published. It was printed in several volumes between 1838 and 1849, with the first volumes dedicated to the Arthurian material; volume I contained the Welsh Romances Owain, Peredur, and Geraint and Enid, while volume two contained Culhwch ac Olwen and The Dream of Rhonabwy. Geraint and Enid served as the basis for Alfred, Lord Tennyson's two poems about Geraint in the Idylls of the King.
Read more about this topic: Lady Charlotte Guest
Famous quotes containing the word translations:
“Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 18:7.
Other translations use “temptations.”