Becoming Welsh: Counter-Colonialism and the Negotiation of Native Identity in Peredur Vab Efrawc

n the nineteenth century, Matthew Arnold emerged as a major spokesmen for and champion of Celtic literature and culture, using his influence to establish a Chair of Celtic Studies at Oxford. Arnold, however, was not motivated by a disinterested love of things Celtic. His championship of Celtic Studies, as Robert Young and Patricia Ingham have argued, was part of an English colonial agenda that sought to make Celtic "the museum relic of an extinct culture." "Never," Young asserts,