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The Mabinogion

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The Mabinogion

By: Anonymous
Narrated by: Matt Addis
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About this listen

Compiled in Middle Welsh during the 12th and 13th centuries, The Mabinogion is a mesmerizing panorama of fantasy, romance, tragedy and humor. Blending Arthurian romance, Welsh legend and mythology, it tells tales of heroic knights, fair maidens, dramatic battles and magical beasts across 12 fantastical stories. These comprise the 'Three Welsh Romances', Arthurian tales that also appear in the work of Chrétien de Troyes; the myths of Branwen, Pwyll Manawydan and Math; and the five 'native tales', which include a romance about the Roman emperor Magnus Maximus. It continues to inspire writers today and is said to have influenced Alan Garner's The Owl Service and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Public Domain (P)2019 Naxos Audiobooks Classics Linguistics Social Sciences Witty Arthurian

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I will listen to this again just to hear Matt Addis's voice. This brought the tales of the Mabinogi to life for me in a way that reading it myself never could.

Loved every minute.

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Brilliantly narrated in many very good accents and styles. Not an English person mispronouncing all the names :-)

Excellent in all ways

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In all senses, overwhelming! The Mabinogion is phantasmagoric, a marathon and at times very monotonous. I have come to it with a smattering of Arthurian stories under my belt from the French and German medieval traditions ( Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram Von Eschenbach…). I was not prepared, in my ignorance to find the same tales cropping up, albeit with name-changes: Perceval is Peredur; Eric is Owein, for example. Fascinating stuff. And much, much more which has nothing to do with Arthur, feeling very ancient indeed. There is magic and mystery and many familiar “fairy tale” motifs.
You have to “hear your way in” to these stories, particularly when they come at you thick and fast, and at such length. Actually, they SCREAM storytelling - the sort of tales told by a roaring fire in the midst of winter. Listening to the whole lot like this, let alone reading the weighty text, are clearly not the best way! There is a reason for the endless repetitions… .
Irrelevantly and obviously, the compilation all feels very Welsh - and it takes a native Welsh speaker to master the pronunciation of names, as is done here. Lady Charlotte Guest’s translation can get very annoying and cliche’d, whilst in the main being completely OK ( I think there is an excellent modern version, published by Penguin, but sadly no acceptable Audio version).
If you like a good tale and wish to enlarge your creative experience, then the Mabinogion is for you!

Overwhelming!

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I read the book many years ago and remembered enjoying it. taste must have changed a lot because I found it hard going.

the repetitiveness is annoying. also thr regular lists of names, some of which go on for several minutes: we don't need a list of names of characters who don't exist in thr stories outside of the list. the absurdity is quite amusing and annoying: the chap who can only be killed by a particular spear on a particular day while bathing with one foot on the edge of the bath and the other on a goat is easily tricked into putting himself in this exact situation by his scheming wife saying 'show me how it is you could be so killed so I might protect you from it'. equally infuriating is that everything is described as 'the greatest ever seen' only to usually be immediately surpassed by an even greater banquet, pile of treasure or pile of virtuous maidens.

the complete objectification of women is quite tiresome too. they exist only to give out ridiculous quests, fall in love with selfish knights at first sight and then provide then with wealth before disappearing from the text. all the male characters are swallowing, grasping narcissistic Maniacs.

thr stories are clearly designed to be told by bards to amuse Lords at banquets. all the stories are about the accumulation of wealth and are very formulaic. they are an interesting study of medieval values, myth and literature and are worth reading for this reason, but it reads like super gory children's fiction.

useful as ethnographic & historical literature

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