Mabinogi Bibliography

The social, economic, gender and literary tensions of Charlotte Guest, who published the first complete (and bilingual) version of the Mabinogi/on.
Research Institute for Arts and Humanities, Swansea. Dir. Elaine Canning.
This paper explores three themes: the othering of Guest as ethnic, economic and gendered outsider, with their contradictions.
Charlotte Guest was English, her name aptly defining her as an outsider. She stayed in Wales for only a quarter of her life, from 1833 -1855. Yet she magnificently promoted Welsh heritage with considerable authenticity, gifting the modern world the oldest prose literature of Britain, ‘The Mabinogion’; a crucial, strategic tool in Welsh decolonisation. Guest’s collaborative skills are misunderstood to accuse her of misappropriating Welsh scholars’ work. She is primarily framed as translator, extracting Welsh treasure for English enrichment. Silence suppresses her promotion of Welsh for the Welsh, and why she then abandoned Wales.
An (elite) economic migrant, pulled here by the booming money in Welsh industrial dynamism, Guest became an ironmaster. Philanthropic, but exploitative, her profits from Welsh workers funded her extraction of Welsh cultural wealth. Yet her triumphant pioneering of the Welsh text served Welsh interests.
A powerless Victorian female, she ran a trans-continental industry, built peak social status for her family, influenced international politicians, learned mediaeval Welsh, published and translated the Mabinogion. A superwoman birthing ten children as she worked, her maternity is used to derogate her. At the last her gender explains her dedication to the Other culture more than any other aspect of her complex othered status.
Equally dishonoured both by disinformation, and lack of serious scrutiny, the contradictions of this giant Guest defy stereotypes, calling for deconstruction of her many transgressions.