digital humanities, Mabinogion, Welsh history, Welsh legend

A timeline of history and the Mabinogi

A timeline showing the interrelationship of historical events and the stories of the Mabinogion.

Created using Timeline.JS (timeline.knightlab.com)

This timeline looks nice, but what I really wanted was to show how the settings of the stories in the Mabinogion fit into the interstices of British history just before or after a period of conquest–the PKM occur in the period between Caesar’s first incursion and full Roman colonization; Maxen Wledig takes place at the very end of the Roman period, and all the Arthurian stories in the period between the Roman and Saxon eras; Rhonabwy takes place just around the time of Norman dominance and looks back to the Arthurian era; and the writing of the tales themselves in the White and Red Books occurred during a period of relative Welsh independence from the domination of the English.

In all, I think that a static timeline would have made my point better, but this kind of timeline is useful for making narrative points.

Standard

Leave a comment