Reviews

The Mabinogion by

lolocole's review against another edition

adventurous challenging funny informative mysterious slow-paced

3.0

beant64's review against another edition

3.0

I much preferred the main branches of the Mabinogion than the Arthurian tales. The first 4 branches are very strong, but the rest of the book drags on with sub-par King Arthur stories that do not match up to the standard of other famous Arthurian tales by much better writers. This is king Arthurs mythology in its infancy and it certainly feels like it.

lady_of_shalott's review against another edition

adventurous fast-paced

3.75

sammirose's review against another edition

adventurous challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.25

moss_and_ink's review against another edition

adventurous challenging funny informative lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

nwhyte's review against another edition

http://nhw.livejournal.com/877227.html[return][return]The collection of Welsh classic legends. The stories are not gems of perfection - internal inconsistencies and unresolved plot elements abound - but I found myself nonetheless carried along by most of them. Oddly enough the one that grabbed me most was Peredur, the story that later became that of Perceval or Parsifal, with his peculiar series of deeply symbolic adventures.[return][return]The Penguin explanatory apparatus was a bit annoying. A page at the start of each story, explaining what happened, and a long introduction (24 pages of a 300 page book) which all combined to present the Mabinogion as an object to study rather than literature to be enjoyed.[return][return]With all that editorial effort, I would also have liked some unpacking of the basic concepts of the Welsh society portrayed. There is a little of this - the translator explains the shifting meanings of arvei meaning first "weapons" but later "armour", and marchawg which shifted from being a mere "horseman" to a full "knight". But there were other concepts which the translator puts directly into English expecting that we will automatically understand what was meant in the original medieval Welsh: "king", "court", "girl", "to sleep with".[return][return]I'm very surprised that there is so little extant Welsh literature of that era; the Irish somehow must have preserved their manuscripts better? Or wrote things down sooner?

sirlancelot2021's review against another edition

adventurous challenging lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

ianbanks's review against another edition

4.0

Given that a lot of my recent reading has featured Arthur in some form or another, I thought it might be an idea to go back to the beginning and see just how the legends have changed over time. So I've started with this collection of Welsh stories, around a thousand years old.

It's an interesting collection, telling the adventures of some Welsh folk heroes or characters. For those of us who are interested in Arthur, he doesn't turn up for several stories but then he becomes a mainstay: not a main character but an important secondary character, referred to as King or Emperor interchangeably and performing the astonishing deeds of physical prowess that we have come to expect from him.

It's a different world, though, to what we are used to in Arthurian stories of the modern day: there's honour at stake, and worth gained through deeds of strength and courage, but it feels more akin to the honour coveted by Achilles in the Iliad - strength and victory in battle - rather than our modern concepts of integrity and respect. Either way, the characters soon receive towering reputations as men of strength and power rather than as defenders of the king's law and those weaker than themselves.

This matters little, though, because these are great fun and enjoyable to read... once you have acclimatised yourself to the archaic style. It's not difficult to read, but, if - like me - you are not used to reading works from more than a few hundred years in the past, it does take a little time to get used to "how things work" in the Mabinogion. For one thing, characterisation doesn't have the subtlety that we are used to now in our stories - the lessons or morality we can take from these stories is that of broad strokes rather than details. For another, the details that we do get are often more about who is present and what they are wearing or sitting on rather than who they are and what they're like. There's also the run-on paragraphs which might go on for most of a page and have several conversations in them - the indenting of lines for each new piece of speech is only a modern invention (mind you, so are paragraphs themselves) so that's another convention you must adjust to. Mind you, it does read aloud very well, which is how these stories would have been experienced when they were first created.

All this whinging sounds as though I didn't enjoy it when I had a thoroughly good time with it: the telling of the tales is so jolly and matter-of-fact that you feel fairly blase towards the fact that someone has killed two hundred men by crushing in their skulls or defeated eighty knights in single combat. I think that bugged me the most - hardly anybody mourns anything in this story except their reputations.

There's also the interesting take on arthurian myth: this is one of the earliest collections that features the king in any depth and it's great to see how many elements of the story are already in place: Cei and Bedweyr, Gereint and Gwalchmai are here, as is Gwenhwyfar. There's no Lancelot yet or Merlin or Saxon invaders: they are later additions for when the story becomes more widely known and a part of folklore. For now, Arthur provides a backdrop rather than a context.

marcys_books9's review against another edition

3.0

The Four Branches of the Mabinogion are the real draw of this collection. That’s where you get the most interesting and memorable stories, and they inspire an imagery that makes your imagination go wild. The added stories at the end are the Arthurian legend focused ones and, while cool to read, are a bit dry. The translation at times felt heavy to read, but the translation notes and explanations were very well done.

My favourite has to be the Fourth Branch, because you can tell someone was making it up on the spot with the amount of tangents it goes on, and how crazy it goes.

ashley73922's review against another edition

3.0

I think I picked the wrong translation to start with--the stories were presented in a different order from the traditional collection, which I found a bit confusing, and the quality of the translation itself wasn't great. Will try a different translation soon.