Ymadawiad Arthur

Ymadawiad Arthur is a hugely influential work, widely held to have opened a new era for Welsh-language poetry,[3] marking the beginning of the early 20th-century renaissance of Welsh literature.

[7][8][9] Ymadawiad Arthur is an awdl, a form of long poem which employs a variety of classical Welsh metres,[10] though Jones uses them with a greater degree of flexibility than had up to that time been usual.

[14] The poem is notable for its revival of many words from Middle Welsh, Jones being an influential exponent of what he called rhin yr heniaith, "the old language's virtue".

[18][3] Some of his knowledge of Welsh stories from the Middle Ages may derive not from the original texts but from secondary sources such as the scholarly works of Sir John Rhŷs.

[19] However, Jones certainly read with care the late medieval poems known as cywyddau, and the verse technique of Ymadawiad Arthur benefited substantially from this.

[3][9] In 1922 John Jay Parry called it "without a doubt the best thing the Welsh have produced on King Arthur in modern times, and...worthy to rank with the best in any language".

[21] Critics have particularly praised its elegance of language and brilliance of style, its avoidance of speechifying and philosophical disquisition, and, as compared with Tennyson's "The Passing of Arthur", its superior structure, dramatic qualities, and pace.

[24] Jones's narrative poems, Ymadawiad Arthur among them, are above all defences of the traditional, ancient values of his people in an age of increasing philistinism, materialism and industrial capitalism.

[26] Jones's Arthur, according to Jerry Hunter, represents faith in the spirit of the Welsh nation's ability to resurrect itself and overcome the fragmentation of modern society.

Bedwyr, agonizing over the catastrophe which he feared would befall his defenseless country should he obey Arthur's command, is one of the most deeply moving figures in Welsh literature.