2. Branwen, Daughter of Llyr
This branch is quite unlike the others, being gloomy in tone and international in scope. It details a genocidal war between Britain and Ireland, turning on the person of a British princess, Branwen daughter of Llyr, sister of the giant-king Bendigeidfran. There has already been a talk on Branwen in a previous series of lectures, but the tale is very rich and this lecture traverses the same territory in a different way, focusing on the themes of concealment, national identity, and violence.
Bio
Dr Mark Williams is Fellow and Tutor in English at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. He is a specialist in the medieval languages and literatures of Wales and Ireland, and the author of Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (Princeton, 2016), and The Celtic Myths that Shaped the Way We Think (Thames & Hudson, 2021). He is in training as a Jungian psychoanalyst
don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day