J. Gwyn Griffiths

Infobox Writer
name = J. Gwyn Griffiths


imagesize =
caption =
birthname = John Gwyn Griffiths
birthdate = 7 December 1911
birthplace = Porth, Wales
deathdate = 15 June 2004
deathplace = Swansea, Wales
occupation = Professor
subject =
movement = Cadwgan Circle
notableworks =
spouse = Käte Bosse-Griffiths
children = Robat Gruffudd
Heini Gruffudd
relatives =
influences = Kurt Schwitters
influenced =

John Gwyn Griffiths (7 December 1911–15 June 2004), was a Welsh poet, Egyptologist and nationalist political activist who spent the largest span of his career lecturing at Swansea University. ["The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales". John Davies, Nigel Jenkins, Menna Baines and Peredur Lynch (2008) pg336 ISBN 9780708319536]

Early history

Born in 1911 in Porth in the Rhondda Valley, Griffiths was educated at Porth Grammar school before reading Classics at Cardiff. He worked in Liverpool University and became a professor at Oxford. He returned to Porth and took up teaching at his old school in Porth. Griffiths moved further up the valley to Pentre after marrying Käte Bosse in 1939. Bosse, a German-born Jewish refugee, shared academic and literary interests with Griffiths and was a scholar in Egyptology; later in her life she became Keeper of Archaeology at Swansea Museum.

Griffiths was a Bohemian figure who did not fit comfortably with other academics, and his writing was influenced by the European avant-garde movement, especially that of Dadaist Kurt Schwitters. Griffiths, along with his wife, set up a writing and intellectual circle in the Rhondda for likeminded thinkers. The group, named the Cadwgan Circle (Cylch Cadwgan), had a membership consisting of the finest writers of the Welsh language the Rhondda had ever produced, including Rhydwen Williams, Euros Bowen, Pennar Davies and J. Kitchener Davies.

Academic and political career

Griffiths would lecturer at a wide array of universities, including Cairo, Tübingen and Bonn, but settled at Swansea University where he became Assistant Lecturer in Classics in 1946. In 1946 he and his wife left the Rhondda and moved to Sketty in Swansea. The same year he began editing the Welsh Magazine, "Y Fflam" (The Flame) with Euros Bowen, mainly as a response to W.J. Gruffydd's "Y Llenor", a Professor of Welsh at Cardiff, whom the Cadwgan Circle saw as the antiquated voice of Welsh language politics. Griffiths became Lecturer of Classics in 1947, a post he held until 1959. During this period Griffiths became more and more associated with the national party for Wales, Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru and from 1948 until 1952, edited the party's newspaper "Y Ddraig Goch". ["The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales". John Davies, Nigel Jenkins, Menna Baines and Peredur Lynch (2008) pg337 ISBN 9780708319536] Griffiths would also stand as a member for Plaid Cymru in 1959 and 1964, on both occasions for the district of the Gower, in Swansea but was not elected to Parliament. Griffiths would also be an important figure in the promotion of Welsh language in law, and on several occasions was arrested for minor violations, as a form of non-violent protest.

Griffiths would write several major works on Egyptian religion, as well as work on Latin and Greek texts, though he is better known in Wales for his poetry; of which he published four collections of texts, all in the Welsh language. He also wrote literary criticism, most notably "I Ganol y Frwydr" ("Into the Thick of Battle") in 1970.

In 1973 until he retired in 1979, Griffiths was made a Professor of Classics and Egyptology (Emeritus), and it was during this period that he produced two of his most important academic texts, his editions of Plutarch's "De Iside et Osiride" (1970) and Apuleius of Madaura "The Isis Book" (1975), from the last book of the Golden Ass.

Griffiths had two sons with Bosse, Robat Gruffudd (b. 1943) and Heini Gruffudd (b. 1946).

Works of note

Poetry

* Yr Efengyl Dywyll (1944)
* Cerddi Cadwgan (1953) a collection of works from members of the Cadwgan Circle
* Ffroenau'r Draig (1961)
* Cerddi Cairo (1969)
* Cerddi'r Holl Eneidiau (1981)

Academic work

* The Conflict of Horus and Seth (1960)
* The Origins of Osiris and his Cult (1980)

Literary criticism

* I Ganol y Frwydr (1970)

References