1 September 1985(1985-09-01) (aged 91) Cardiff, Wales
Political party
Plaid Cymru
Spouse
Margaret Gilcriest
(m. 1924; died 1984)
Children
1
Alma mater
University of Liverpool
Saunders Lewis (born John Saunders Lewis; 15 October 1893 – 1 September 1985) was a Welsh politician, poet, dramatist, Medievalist, and literary critic. Born into a Welsh-speaking ministerial family in Greater Liverpool, Lewis studied in a public school growing up. He rediscovered the importance of both his heritage language and cultural roots while serving as a junior officer in the British Army during the trenches of the First World War. As a vocal supporter of Welsh nationalism, Lewis believed, however, that heritage language revival, cultural nationalism and the decolonisation of Welsh-language literature, the dramatic arts, and culture needed to precede Welsh devolution or political independence. If the excessive Anglophilia and colonial mentality traditionally known as Dic Siôn Dafydd was never challenged or defeated, Lewis predicted in 1918, "the Welsh Parliament would [only] be an enlarged County Council."[1]
Lewis accordingly became a co-founder of Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru (The National Party of Wales), now the Welsh nationalist political party known as Plaid Cymru, at a covert meeting with fellow nationalists during the 1925 National Eisteddfod of Wales. Lewis has been described by Jan Morris as, "the most passionate of twentieth century Welsh patriots",[2] and as being, "one of the few twentieth century writers in Welsh with a European reputation, but for many Welshmen [he was] chiefly the keeper of the national conscience."[3] Lewis is usually acknowledged as one of the most vitally important figures in 20th-century Welsh-language literature. He is also widely credited, through his 1962 radio address Tynged yr Iaith ("The Fate of the Language"), with almost singlehandedly bringing Welsh back from the brink of language death.
In 1970, Lewis was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature and was appointed as a Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory by Pope Paul VI. Saunders Lewis' Traditionalist Catholic and Distributist beliefs gave him a simultaneously anti-Marxist and anti-colonialist interpretation of Welsh history and a similar vision, influenced by his study of what had he considered to have worked in Irish nationalism, for the future of the Welsh people. In the 21st century, he continues, for this reason to be the target of posthumous attacks by Far Left politicians from the very party he helped to found. Even so, Lewis was overwhelmingly voted the tenth greatest Welsh hero in the '100 Welsh Heroes' poll, released on St. David's Day 2004.[4]
^ Jelle Krol (2020), Minority Language Writers in the Wake of World War One: A Case Study of Four European Authors, Palgrave. Page 107.
^ Jan Morris (1984), The Matter of Wales: Epic Views of a Small Country, Oxford University Press. Page 352.
^ Jan Morris (1984), The Matter of Wales: Epic Views of a Small Country, Oxford University Press. Page 132.
SaundersLewis (born John SaundersLewis; 15 October 1893 – 1 September 1985) was a Welsh politician, poet, dramatist, Medievalist, and literary critic...
Bryan LewisSaunders (born 1969 in Washington, D.C.) is an endurance artist, a performance artist, videographer, performance poet, and self-portrait painter...
President SaundersLewis) towards Europe's totalitarian regimes compromised its early appeal further. SaundersLewis, David John Williams and Lewis Valentine...
Centre London. Clark left Drama Centre in her final term to star in SaundersLewis's play Blodeuwedd with Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru. She has appeared in...
Welsh Language Society in 1962. Welsh poet, novelist and dramatist SaundersLewis, who was a prominent support of nationalism in Wales, rejected the possibility...
independence, brought him to Welsh nationalism, and in 1925 he met with SaundersLewis, H. R. Jones, and others at a 1925 National Eisteddfod meeting, held...
Welsh protesters. Protest against the bombing school was summed up by SaundersLewis when he wrote that the UK government was intent upon turning one of...
a Marxist concept. Anti-Marxist nationalist intellectuals, such as SaundersLewis, Máirtín Ó Direáin, and John Lorne Campbell, who have also favored political...
writer SaundersLewis argued that the Welsh bards of the era, "were expressing in their poetry a love for a stable, deep-rooted civilization." Lewis added...
context of an industrial landscape. The inter-war period is dominated by SaundersLewis, for his political and reactionary views as much as his plays, poetry...
sonnets, including Welsh nationalist and Traditionalist Catholic poet SaundersLewis and Far-left poet Thomas Evan Nicholas. The first sonnets in Medieval...
Esther. Anchor Bible, vol. 7B. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. Paton, Lewis B. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Esther. International...
positive legacies of the reports that prominent Welsh nationalist activist SaundersLewis opined in The Fate of the Language in 1962 was that Wales embraced bilingualism...
language and the political independence of the Welsh nation. Although SaundersLewis is regarded as the founder of Plaid Cymru, the historian John Davies...
Griffiths David Hare Catherine Johnson Terry Johnson Sarah Kane Sue Lenier SaundersLewis Henry Livings Frederick Lonsdale Stephen Lowe David Mercer Edgar Middleton...
Buchedd Garmon is a radio drama in the Welsh language written by SaundersLewis. The first broadcast was in 1937. The story portrays the visit of Garmon...
April 2015. "SaundersLewis: Fate of the Language". Retrieved 14 August 2012. Jones, Alun R.; Thomas, Gwyn (1983). Presenting SaundersLewis (2nd ed.)....
in two versions, one in Welsh and another in English, of Welsh poet SaundersLewis' Brad, which was about the 20 July plot. Burton voiced one of the conspirators...
notes: "a widely debatable area of Anglo-Welsh acceptability exists". SaundersLewis, the noted Welsh-language poet, novelist, dramatist, and nationalist...
1936, the building was set on fire, and the Welsh nationalists SaundersLewis, Lewis Valentine and D. J. Williams claimed responsibility for the arson...
Clancy (1993), SaundersLewis: Selected Poems, University of Wales Press. Pages ix-x. Translated by Joseph P. Clancy (1993), SaundersLewis: Selected Poems...
and consort of Llywelyn the Great, Prince of Wales Siwan (play), by SaundersLewis Sewant, beads used as a currency by Native Americans Siwan (album),...
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