Llewelyn Hopwood

BIO
Having left my hometown of Carmarthen, I obtained a BA in Modern Languages (Spanish and Celtic) at Jesus College, Oxford, which included a year spent as a research assistant at the University of Valladolid (Spain), translating in Córdoba (Spain), and teaching English and Welsh in the Patagonian town of Esquel (Argentina). I then undertook an interdisciplinary MSt in Medieval Studies at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, writing a dissertation on multilingual poetry from medieval Wales, where I chose to remain to undertake a DPhil in English, studying the impact of social change on late medieval Welsh poetry by looking at the sounds that feature therein.

DOCTORAL RESEARCH 
My thesis argues two related points. Conceptually, using late medieval Welsh poetry as a case study, it demonstrates that much new and nuanced meaning can be unveiled by listening to the sounds represented in medieval literature. Specifically, it argues that Welsh poets of the Beirdd yr Uchelwyr period (c. 1300–c.1600) increasingly deemed ‘good’ sound to be controlled sound and claims that this concern with regulation was a reaction to the perceived threat to their once stable and celebrated social position brought about by colonisation, urbanisation, and mechanisation. Poets emphasised the exceptionalism of their controlled and refined Welsh, dismissing the sound of anyone and anything that did not meet their criteria, in order to maintain their high, though destabilised, social standing. The chapters thus explore three different aspects of the contemporary auditory landscape: mechanical sounds, musical sounds, and the sounds of language itself. Querying the superior sound of ‘good’ Welsh compared to ‘faulty’ Welsh and foreign languages, I argue that it is no coincidence that this period saw the codification of strict-metre poetry in the form of the Bardic Grammars, this being part of the poets’ attempts to act as the gatekeepers of ‘good’ sound within the acoustic community of late medieval Wales.

ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE
I assist with the teaching of Celtic languages at the Faculty, including supervising dissertations on medieval literature in Celtic languages and teaching modules on medieval lyric poetry and Middle Welsh and Old Irish language and literature. Beyond the university, I translate creative writing, including musical productions, I teach Welsh to adults, and I am the Welsh materials assistant on the University of Liverpool's "Human Remains" project (https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/archaeology-classics-and-egyptology/research). I also co-edit the Faculty's graduate research journal, "Oxford Research in English" (https://oxfordresearchenglish.wordpress.com/) and I run the blog and social media accounts for "Oxford Medieval Studies" (https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/).

ACADEMIC OUTPUT
•    ‘Tudur Aled’, Dictionary of Literary Biography, ed. Bethan Jenkins et al. (Michigan: Gale, 2023) (commissioned)
•    ‘Gutun Owain’, Dictionary of Literary Biography, ed. Bethan Jenkins et al. (Michigan: Gale, 2023) (commissioned)
•    Co-author with Jenyth Evans, ‘Elis Gruffydd’, Dictionary of Literary Biography, ed. Bethan Jenkins et al. (Michigan: Gale, 2023) (commissioned)
•    ‘The Clêr Poets of Medieval Wales and the Inhuman Noise of Humans’, The Senses in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, ed. Ann Buckley et al., 5 vols. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), II (under review)
•    ‘Hanes dwyieithog Gruffudd ap Cynan a Dadeni’r Ddeuddegfed Ganrif’, Llên Cymru 45 (2022), (accepted for publication) [Welsh: 'The bilingual history of Gruffudd ap Cynan and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance’]
•    ‘Creative bilingualism in late-medieval Welsh poetry’, Studia Celtica 54 (2021)
•    ‘Amser gwrando: Sut mae ein canfyddiad o sain wedi newid?’, O’r Pedwar Gwynt (Summer 2021), 33–35 [Welsh: 'Time to listen: how has our perception of sound changed?']
•    ‘Sain Lo-Fi’, O’r Pedwar Gwynt (Spring 2021), 38–9 [Welsh: 'Lo-Fi Sound', a review of Hartmut Rosa, The Uncontrollability of the World (2020)]
•    Co-translator with Mererid Hopwood, ‘Yr Hen Wlad a’r Hen Wladfa: nodiadau ar bersbectif o Batagonia, 150 mlynedd ers y glaniad cyntaf’, Y Traethodydd (2015), 141–158 [Spanish-Welsh: 'The Old Country and the Old Colony: notes on perspectives on Patagonia, 150 years after the first arrival’]

I also have articles in online blogs, and student and local papers, such as Oxford Medieval Studies, Y Drych and Cwlwm, and have contributed to the podcasts Medieval Roots and The Lost Sounds.