Le bardisme de Taliesin a Taldir : crise du chant et métamorphose du texte
As a term designating the poetic art and the doctrine of bards, bardism refers to medieval as well as contemporary Celtic literatures. The specificity of the figure of the bard and of bardic poetics will be highlighted by means of a historical panomara in the present study, which bears on the transition between the Celtic tradition and a literary tradition in France and in the British Isles on the one hand, and on the transition between an oral and a written tradition at a time of social, political crises, and therefore wavering identities on the other hand. The intertextual links connecting bardic texts to each other constitute very much a fundamental identity principle. From the songs and poems of Welsh bards in the early Middle Ages to the modern era communal mystifications (such as Macpherson’s), poems and traditional material have constantly interacted throughout the entire history of bardism. Bardic texts follow the ever-changing and permeable patterns of the art of singing. This very poetics pervades the bardic literary school created in Brittany in the year 1900 – a school which takes oral tradition and cliches to be its main composition principles.