In 1415 Henry V, king of England, invaded northern France. In the east, two new powers, Muscovy and, above all, the Ottoman Empire, were putting eastern Europe to the sword. The 'modern states' of western Christendom were characterised by the provision of substantial revenues derived from national taxation raised by consent. Dialogue, political intercourse between prince and subjects, was essential to the modern state. Both theory and practice needed adapting to the particular political society of each state on at least two levels. Epitomising power, witnessed by an attentive audience, they became complex rituals, given tangible expression as dramatic presentations overlaid with symbolism. Speeches, in particular sermons, could convey unequivocal declarations of political thought. Clerics and ecclesiastics who had completed their university studies in the faculty of arts had become acquainted with the political works of Antiquity. History, like politics, was being transformed by literature; the success of Jean Froissart's work in aristocratic and bourgeois circles is testimony of this.

Politics: Theory and Practice

The nobility of Europe at the end of the Middle Ages needs and deserves to be studied from a standpoint that is not merely socio-economic, but political and cultural, too. Europe is deemed synonymous with Latin Christendom. The Castilian nobility was distinctly divided into three categories: the titulos, the caballeros and later the hidalgos and the escuderos. Nobles from different parts of western Christendom could also meet at the court. The Prussian Reise, that cross-roads of western nobility, was more characteristic of the fourteenth than of the fifteenth century. Texts, in some cases translations, spread far from their place of origin identical concepts of nobility and chivalry, and stimulated commentaries upon them. The existence of noble classes of varying importance within different European societies is explained, first and foremost, by the long-term history of these societies, and, vitally, by its outcome.

The European Nobility

(b): Yorkist and Early Tudor England

Fifteenth-century Scotland was a very violent society. To understand the mentalite of fifteenth-century Scotland, historians have naturally emphasised the nationalism of Wyntoun and Bower. Historians of Scotland have tried to demonstrate the success of the kingdom in terms of contemporary experience. The nature of Scottish political society highlights sharply an issue obscured by more 'developed' societies: that in the end, successful rule is a political and not a constitutional matter. Fifteenth-century Scotland provides us with the paradox of exceedingly tough and effective kings ruling a decentralised kingdom, in which to an increasingly unusual degree local power could be exercised without challenge. Scotland was the first kingdom to receive formal recognition of the right of the crown to nominate to the greater benefices. No doubt Scotland had this distinction because the Papacy was more willing to give to the less important kingdom; but that was hardly a relevant consideration to the Scots.

Scotland: 1406–1513

Political representation, based on the mandate bestowed on elected and responsible delegates, and applied at regional and national levels, can be considered as one of the major contributions of the western Middle Ages to world history. German historian Otto Hintze identified the conditions necessary for the unique emergence of representative government in western Europe. Hintze saw the extension of monarchical authority over the representative institutions for the development of representation. This chapter deals with the wider concept of representation, which includes forms. It is generally assumed that states or, before their stabilisation, countries or territories formed the system in which representative institutions operated. This chapter focuses on the analytical framework of political systems, starting from the various representative activities themselves, rather than from the territories. Royal elections stimulated the development of representative institutions in Sweden. Fundamental weaknesses of the medieval representative institutions were their lack of continuity in the monarchical model, and their lack of unity in both models.

Representation (Since the Thirteenth Century)

This fifth volume in the Guide to Welsh Literature series covers the nineteenth century and offers a comprehensive introduction in English to the Welsh-language literature of the time. It contains essays on the most important individual writers of prose and poetry, on the lyric poetic tradition and the eisteddfod poets, on travel writing, periodicals and newspapers, on fiction, on criticism and on political commentary The Victorian age was a fruitful and expansive period for Welsh writing. The chapters in this volume comment on the beginnings of the novel and the flowering of the press and of political writing in the wake of political awakening in Wales, as well as on the continuation and development of the older poetic tradition. The book incorporates new research and critical thinking and brings together in one volume much material, which is otherwise unavailable to the English-speaking reader.

Hywel Teifi Edwards

Papers

A guide to Welsh literature