British literature in languages other than English

Latin literature, mostly ecclesiastical, continued to be written in the centuries following the withdrawal of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the fifth-century, including Chronicles by Bede (672/3–735), Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, and Gildas (c. 500–570), De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae.

Some Old Norse poetry survives relating to this period, including the Orkneyinga saga an historical narrative of the history of the Orkney Islands, from their capture by the Norwegian king in the ninth century onwards until about 1200.

[7]) At the end of the 12th century, Layamon in Brut adapted Wace to make the first English language work to use the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

A contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer, Gower is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in Anglo-Norman, Latin, and Middle English respectively, which are united by common moral and political themes.

[14] Major Scottish writers from the 15th century include Henrysoun, Dunbar, Douglas and Lyndsay, who wrote in Middle Scots, often simply called English, the dominant language of Scotland.

[18] The earliest datable text in Manx (preserved in 18th-century manuscripts), a poetic history of the Isle of Man from the introduction of Christianity, dates to the 16th century at the latest.

In anticipation of James VI's expected inheritance of the English throne, court masques in England were already developing the new literary imagery of a united "Great Britain", sometimes delving into Roman and Celtic sources.

[25][26] The Book of Common Prayer was translated into French by Jerseyman Jean Durel, later Dean of Windsor, and published for use in the Channel Islands in 1663 as Anglicanism was established as the state religion after the Stuart Restoration.

The novel depicts the creation of a utopian land where "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendour, piety and public spirit" are the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of the mythical Bensalem.

Scotsman George Buchanan (1506–1582) was the Renaissance writer from Britain (and Ireland) who had the greatest international reputation, being considered the finest Latin poet since classical times.

[29] Cín Lae Uí Mhealláin is an account of the Irish Confederate Wars which "reflected the Ulster Catholic point of view" written by Tarlach Ó Mealláin.

[28] In the introduction to his groundbreaking 1933 volume Highland Songs of the Forty-Five, John Lorne Campbell explained that, contrary to widely held beliefs, the Scottish Gàidhealtachd during the 18th-century was far from isolated from the literature and culture of the outside world.

Mairghread nighean Lachlainn and Catriona Nic Fhearghais are among woman poets who reflected on the crushing effects on traditional Gaelic culture of the aftermath of the Jacobite uprisings.

A consequent sense of desolation pervaded the works of Scottish Gaelic writers such as Dughall Bochanan which mirrored many of the themes of the graveyard poets writing in England.

These included Alexander Montgomerie's The Cherrie and the Slae in 1700, over a decade later an edition of poems by Sir David Lindsay, and nine printings of Allan Ramsay's The Gentle shepherd between 1743 and 1793.

Allan MacDonald (1859-1905), a priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Argyll and the Isles assigned to South Uist and Eriskay, was a native English speaker who only chose to begin learning his heritage language of Scottish Gaelic as a seminarian at Blair's College in Aberdeen.

Philippe Le Sueur Mourant's Jèrriais tales of Bram Bilo, an innocent abroad in Paris, were an immediate success in Jersey in 1889 and went through a number of reprintings.

[37] Increased literacy in rural and outlying areas and wider access to publishing through, for example, local newspapers encouraged regional literary development as the 19th century progressed.

Some writers in lesser-used languages and dialects of the islands gained a literary following outside their native regions, for example William Barnes (1801–86) in Dorset, George Métivier (1790–1881) in Guernsey and Robert Pipon Marett (1820–84) in Jersey.

Métivier's poems had first appeared in newspapers from 1813 onward, but he spent time in Scotland in his youth where he became familiar with the Scots literary tradition although he was also influenced by Occitan literature.

Ned Beg Hom Ruy (1831–1908) is considered the last important native speaker to write Manx literature, prior to its far more recent language revival.

He also wrote An Eala Bhàn ("The White Swan") after being wounded in action during the 1916 Battle of the Somme, which still remains the most iconic love poem in the whole history of Scottish Gaelic literature.

Welsh poet Hedd Wyn, who was killed by shrapnel wounds received on the first day of the Battle of Passchendaele, was posthumously awarded the Bardic Chair at the 1917 National Eisteddfod of Wales.

After the war, he became a minister for the Presbyterian Church of Wales and wrote many poems that shocked the Welsh population with their graphic descriptions of the horrors of the trenches and their savage attacks on wartime ultra-nationalism.

Even so, in the aftermath of the Second World War there were a large number of Irish working in Britain in the construction industry, rebuilding the cities destroyed during The Blitz by Luftwaffe bombs, and as nurses.

[39] While rebuilding the bombed damaged cities of postwar Britain, Dónall Mac Amhlaigh, a recently demobilized Irish Army veteran and native of Barna, County Galway, kept a very detailed Irish-language diary, which he published as, Dialann Deoraí.

[40] The movement has its origins in the Scottish Renaissance, especially in the work of Sorley MacLean, George Campbell Hay, Derick Thomson and Iain Crichton Smith.

Although many of the products of the Renaissance are in poetry, or in traditional music, many such as MacLean and Iain Crichton Smith, Angus Peter Campbell and more recently Aonghas MacNeacail have blended these with modern international styles such as the magical realism inspired by the Latin American Boom.

[44] For example, Performance poet Gearóid Mac Lochlainn exploits the creative possibilities for poetry in the "creolised Irish" spoken in the Gaeltacht Quarter of West Belfast.

The theatrical landscape has been reconfigured, moving from a single London-based National Theatre at the end of the twentieth-century to four as a result of the effects of political devolution upon cultural policy.