The following book was launched on Saturday 16th December 2000 and is another of those magnificent publications which aims to put the Cornish record straight. Definitely a book to be read and spread. Below is the details from the publicity leaflet followed by a review of the publication by Simon Trezise of the University of Exeter.
The Literature of Cornwall:
Continuity - Identity - Difference 1000 ~ 2000by Alan M Kent 536 pages, 230mm x 152mm, with two dozen illustrations. ISBN 1 900178 28 1 Publication: October, 2000 Softback £15.95 plus p & p For overseas orders, please add £6 per copy for carriage. Payments should be made in sterling; otherwise add the equivalent of £10 for bank conversion
Published by:
Redcliffe Press Ltd., 81g Pembroke Road, Bristol BS8 3EA., England GB tel: 0117-973207 email: johnsansom@aol.com THE LITERATURE OF CORNWALL
Historically, the study of the literary construction of Cornwall has been on a modest scale when compared with other Celtic territories. Alan Kent's study redresses that imbalance by analysing the history and development of the literature of Cornwall and the Cornish between 1000 and 2000. His specific aims have been to identify patterns of continuity, to trace how representations of Cornish identity have altered and to examine how Cornish difference has been explored over time.
The book begins with a historical survey of early Cornish literature, showing how scholars have failed to recognise its place in a wider European context, exploring the importance of such figures as King Arthur, Tristan and Isolde and the mystery plays known as Ordinalia and Beunans Meriasek. It then considers a subsequent period of alignment with English culture in medieval and early modern Cornwall, followed by a consideration of the literary politics and paralysis of the Renaissance and seventeenth-century Cornwall shown in writers such as Nicholas Roscarrock, Richard Carew and Sidney Godolphin.
In the period 1660-1820, new constructions of modern Cornish identity were being forged by writers, paralleling the fragmentation of continuity in writing in Cornish. An analysis of Cornwall between 1820 and 1890 shows how industrial change was crucial in redefining Cornwall's difference, with writers such as Robert Stephen Hawker, John Harris and R.M. Ballantyne. The impact of travel and tourism, and their meeting with Celtic Revivalism, are next explored, leading to a further refinement of Cornish difference between 1890 and 1940. Authors considered here include Henry Jenner, Robert Morton Nance and Arthur Quiller Couch, as well as Thomas Hardy, D.H. Lawrence and Daphne du Maurier.
The author discusses the structural and thematic concerns of writers between 1940 and 1980, such as A.L. Rowse, Jack Clemo, Charles Causley, D.M. Thomas and John Betjeman, as well as how Cornish identity came to be asserted in new ways. Finally, the book comes full circle, exploring the impact of 'devolved' small nations in the European context, with Cornwall asserting its importance as a romantic periphery - as instanced in the defining television series Poldark - and its confident contemporary literature, ranging from Kneehigh Theatre to indigenous Cornish film. There is a concluding discussion of the achievements of Anglo-Cornish and Cornu-English literature, and of Cornwall's literary future.
I am delighted to be able to provide below, the text of a review of Alan's book by Simon Trezise, of the University of Exeter 27.11.00.
CORNWALL FINDS ITS VOICE Do you regard yourself as Cornish? Do you live and work in Cornwall? Are you Cornish by birth and education but live outside of Cornwall by choice or by necessity? Do you holiday in Cornwall but would like to understand its tradition and character more fully than a few days leisure in the working year will allow you? Are you interested in the connection between the rural or industrial Cornish landscape and the Cornish frame of mind? If you can answer 'yes' to any of these questions, you will find inspiration and challenging arguments in Dr Alan Kent's new book The Literature of Cornwall: Continuity, Identity, Difference published by the Redcliffe Press of Bristol, with the support of the Patten Press of Penzance. This study is a daring and imaginative exploration of a thousand years of Cornish literary tradition and its influence on the formation of Cornish identities. Kent introduces new ideas (did you know that Humphrey Davy, the Cornish inventor of the miner's safety lamp, was also a poet?) and makes us question old assumptions (did you know that Daphne du Maurier joined Mebyon Kernow?). Organising his vast subject into three main elements: literature in Cornish, literature in Cornu-English dialect and literature about Cornwall in English, Kent enables us to see the continuities and crises in a developing tradition from the Medieval period to the present, from the Cornish Mystery Cycle to Nick Darke. Kent's argument is buttressed by Professor Charles Thomas's creative preface, a tempting list of sources for further reading, an accurate index, and a series of well-chosen illustrations (Henry Quick, the Zennor Poet, the historian A.L. Rowse as a boy, Sir Arthur Quiller Couch or 'Q').
Kent presents Medieval Cornwall as a complex, European, multi-lingual territory. He manages to illustrate both Cornwall's links with other Celtic nations and its distinctive version of Celtic development. The expected texts, such as the most Cornish version of the Tristan and Iseult legend, are there, but they not contextualised in expected ways. Also, Kent draws attention to less well known evidence, such as the Vocabularium Cornicum of 1000 AD and the intriguing clues about the role of Glasney College at Penryn. The Cornish mystery cycle or Ordinalia, probably performed at the 'plen an gwary' (playing place), is presented in the form of Cornish quotations with accompanying English translation: a reader unfamiliar with Cornish can therefore get close to the power of the original. There is also a fascinating account of Andrew Boorde's founding of a tradition of Cornu-English texts, or texts in Cornish dialect. Kent gleans much from perceptions of Cornishness in the famous work of Shakespeare and Thomas More, before concluding this adventurous section with an evaluation of the two different types of Cornish progress represented by Nicholas Roscarrock and Richard Carew. As Kent explains, the former moves in a Catholic world of Saints and folklore linked to the Celtic past, while the latter embraces the new world of English domination and English language, while still remaining in touch with distinctive Cornish topography and traditions.
Kent's next period of development, from 1660 to 1820, is characterised by the discovery of Cornwall in English travel writings and the replacement of a popular culture in the Cornish language with one that survived among an audience of gentry. The story of Dolly Pentreath the 'fish-jowster', assumed to be the last speaker of Cornish, is told with perception. Language decline, as Kent shows, did not mean the destruction of a Cornish tradition: it survived in other ways. Kent brings this period of Cornish development to life by leading you through Methodist culture, the autobiography of a famous smuggler and the elusive tradition of balladeers or 'droll-tellers'.
The story from 1820 to 1890 begins with a focus on two figures well chosen to show contrasting paths: Parson Hawker of Morwenstow (creator of the 'Trelawny Ballad') and John Harris of Bolenowe Carn, near Camborne (writer of undeservedly little known poetry). As Kent illustrates, Hawker belongs in the rural, Anglo-Catholic, Royalist tradition of Cornishness, while Harris, despite his work set on Carn Brea, is best known as the poet of mining and Methodism. Kent then turns his attention to another overlooked world: that of the Cornish folk-tales recorded by William Bottrell and Robert Hunt in the mid to late nineteenth century. As Kent points out, their work both stresses the Cornishness of Cornwall and its links with the folk-tales of Devon and the wider world. Readers in Devon or Plymouth who do not feel that their home county entirely belongs in England may be fascinated to find that Hunt entitled his work of 1865: The Drolls, Traditions and Superstitions of Old Cornwall: Popular Romances of the West of England. Hunt reminds his readers of the ancient Celtic kingdom of Dumnonia which once stretched far to the east, and that parts of Devon were known as 'Old Cornwall'. The modern reader, with Kent's help, asks: 'just because the Saxon King Athelstan limited the South Western Celts to the land beyond the Tamar in the tenth century, is this border the only significant Cornish limit in the third millenium?' The history of the far-flung Duchy of Cornwall, as researched by A.L. Rowse, and the history of the Cornish abroad as researched by Philip Payton of the Institute of Cornish Studies, supports the idea that there is an enduring quality about Cornwall and Cornishness that is difficult to confine.
Kent's handling of writing about and from Cornwall in the twentieth century is assured. He gives us a Cornish perspective on visiting writers, indigenous writers, and writers who have learned to become natives, ranging widely from literary giants like Woolf and Hardy to lesser known figures. He also succeeds in bringing his study into contact with the contemporary world, commenting on work by Donald Rawe, Charles Causley and others. Part of the reason for Kent's success is that he is so well grounded in the work of other scholars in many disciplines: Payton and Deacon on history, Hale on popular culture, Westland on romantic fiction, Hurst on poetry, Dean and Shaw on folklore, are all combined by Kent to help us. You complete this work wanting to read more in the growing field of Cornish, Celtic and Regional Studies, and there is a feast of references in this book to guide your reading.
The reader of this study learns more about the conundrum of identity than the art of fiction, although Kent certainly lets you see how these two subjects are connected. Kent's work challenges his readers to decide whether their own sense of identity, Cornish or not, is sourced in some or all of the following: national identity, regional identity, ethnicity, gender, class, a particular language, a dialect version of English, geographical territory, patterns of work, and invention. Consider Hawker's disguise of the Telawny ballad as ancient and anonymous, although he wrote most of it himself in 1824. The tricky aspect of literary invention is that writers have such skill with words and stories, such power to make us imitate their verbal habits, that they can turn today's fictions into tomorrow's realities. The result of strengthening or 'forging' a national identity may be liberating for some and disastrous for others: what begins as justified defence and celebration of difference may end as xenophobia. Kent avoids this danger by retaining a sense of humour, by showing the Cornish being critical of themselves and by hinting that he knows 'England' is not a monolithic entity, but a construct that conceals many kinds of individuals with distinctive ways of speaking and living.
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