Problems of Authorship and Attribution: The Welsh-Language Women's Canon Before 1800

Problems of authorship and attribution pose significant methodological challenges for researchers of Welsh-language women poets before 1800. These issues are contingent on the prevailing oral and manuscript cultures of transmission characteristic of Wales’s bardic culture, from which women were largely excluded. This article explores the unstable Welsh-language canon of poetry by women and highlights examples of problematic authorship and attestation. It also interrogates the diachronic wishful thinking of the Welsh feminist agenda alongside the synchronic reality of early modern women poets: is there a coherent female tradition and was it visible to early modern women poets?