The Lexicon of Dafydd ap Gwilym's Poetry

Abstract

Lexical eclecticism is a well-known characteristic of the fourteenth-century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym. This paper will offer a preliminary categorisation of the sources of his language, considering on the one hand what he inherited from the earlier poetic tradition and the various discourses of Middle Welsh prose (religious, legal, historiographical), and on the other hand innovations resulting from use of colloquial vocabulary and loanwords from French, English and Irish, as well as new compounds and abstract formations. An attempt will be made to assess the proportion of core vocabulary of the spoken language in his poetry, with due regard to the associated methodological issues. Some conclusions will be drawn about the kinds of evidence which the poetry can provide for the development of the Welsh language during a period of major socio-political change.