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Research Fellow
Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies (CAWCS)
Tel: 01970 636543
Email: j.day@wales.ac.uk
Role in the University
Jenny Day has been a research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies since 2015 and is currently working on the Poetry of Merlin project.
She teaches on the modules An Introduction to Celtic Literatures (HPCS4005) and Welsh Praise Poetry (HPCS5018), and is a supervisor for postgraduate students.
Background
As a member of the project team of the AHRC-funded Poetry of Merlin project, Jenny has been editing and studying the little-known later corpus of poems attributed to Merlin in manuscripts dating from the fifteenth century to c.1800.
Previously she worked on the The Sacred Landscapes of Medieval Monasteries project (also AHRC-funded), editing poetry addressed by the poet and polymath Gutun Owain to two fifteenth-century abbots of Valle Crucis, and investigating what these and other poetic sources reveal about this important Cistercian abbey.
Jenny was part of the editorial team at Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru from 2013 i 2022, and has worked on several other research projects at the Centre. She edited and translated Lives of St Martin of Tours, St David and St Mary of Egypt for the project (AHRC, 201517), and for the project (Leverhulme, 201718) she collected and analysed water-related place-names from the Book of Llandaf, using these and literary sources to explore the ways in which water resources were exploited and perceived in medieval Wales. For the Poetry of Gutor Glyn project (AHRC, 20082012) she helped develop both the website and . She has an ongoing research interest in medieval Welsh weapons and warfare, stemming from her doctoral studies at Aberystwyth University on weapons in Welsh poetry ().
Academic Interests
- An Introduction to Celtic Literatures (HPCS4005)
- Welsh Praise Poetry (HPCS5018)
- Postgraduate Supervision
Research Interests
Jenny has an ongoing research interest in medieval Welsh poetry and in what it can reveal as a source for various aspects of life in the Middle Ages. She has published a variety of articles on the depiction of weapons and armour in poems ranging in date from the Gododdin to the works of the late-medieval cywyddwyr, and has recently been working on the depiction of monastic life and the monastic estate in the poems of Gutun Owain and his contemporaries.
She has extensive experience of editing and translating medieval prose and poetry, and a particular interest in the way texts change during transmission though various processes of misinterpretation, reinterpretation and adaptation. For the Cult of Saints in Wales project she studied the textual transmission of saints Lives and their adaptation for different audiences, and she is currently investigating the complex inter-relationships and highly changeable content of later prophetic poems for the Poetry of Merlin project.
Expertise
- Editing and interpreting Welsh poetry and prose of the medieval and early modern periods
- Poets and scribes in medieval and early modern Wales
- Scholarship and monasticism in medieval Wales
- Welsh saints cults and hagiography
- Medieval warfare and weapons
Publications
- , C簾teaux Commentarii cistercienses, 73 (2022), ISSN 0009-7497, 25576.
- , in David Parsons and Paul Russell (eds), Seintiau Cymru, Sancti Cambrenses: Studies in the Saints of Wales (Aberystwyth, 2022), 窪蹋勛圖厙 6.
- , in David Parsons and Paul Russell (eds), Seintiau Cymru, Sancti Cambrenses: Studies in the Saints of Wales (Aberystwyth, 2022), 窪蹋勛圖厙 9.
- Buchedd Martin [a new edition and translation of the Welsh Life of St Martin], . (2020)
- , Dwned, 25 (2019), 1145
- , Dwned, 23 (2017), 4177
- , Ll礙n Cymru, 40 (2017), 339
- Weapons and fighting in Y Gododdin,&紳莉莽梯;Studia Celtica XLIX (2015), 12147
- Brigandines in two fifteenth-century request poems,&紳莉莽梯;Studia Celtica XLVII (2013), 16782
- Arms of stone upon my grave: weapons in the poetry of Gutor Glyn, in Dylan Foster Evans, Barry J. Lewis and Ann Parry Owen (eds.), Gwalch Cywyddau Gw韁r: Essays on Gutor Glyn and Fifteenth-century Wales (Aberystwyth: Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2013), 23381
- Shields in Welsh poetry up to c.1300: decoration, shape and significance,&紳莉莽梯;Studia Celtica XLV (2011), 2752