Philosophy
Iolo's philosophy represented a fusion of Christian and Arthurian influences, a romanticism comparable to that of William Blake and the Scottish poet and forger James MacPherson, the revived antiquarian enthusiasm for all things "Celtic", and such elements of bardic heritage as had genuinely survived among Welsh-language poets. Part of his aim was to assert the Welshness of South Wales, particularly his home region of Glamorgan, against the prevalent idea that North Wales represented the purest survival of Welsh traditions. The metaphysics elucidated in his forgeries and other works proposed a theory of concentric "rings of existence", proceeding outward from Annwn (the Otherworld) through Abred and Ceugant to Gwynfyd (purity or Heaven). By 1799, he had become a Unitarian and he was the leading spirit when a Unitarian Association was formed in South Wales in 1802; it was he who drew up the Rheolau a Threfniadau of that body published in 1803.
Read more about this topic: Iolo Morganwg
Famous quotes containing the word philosophy:
“In everyone’s youthful dreams, philosophy is still vaguely but inseparably, and with singular truth, associated with the East, nor do after years discover its local habitation in the Western world. In comparison with the philosophers of the East, we may say that modern Europe has yet given birth to none.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Of your philosophy you make no use
If you give place to accidental evils.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I am still a learner, not a teacher, feeding somewhat omnivorously, browsing both stalk and leaves; but I shall perhaps be enabled to speak with more precision and authority by and by,—if philosophy and sentiment are not buried under a multitude of details.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)