ABSTRACT
Manawydan is Mandubracios, Koch suggests, as he is remembered by native British tradition for a millennium or more, and the traditional form of the story of Manawydan is best understood “as a prolonged exemplary tale of Unrightful Kingship.” If that is not the story we have, it is because at a very late stage—perhaps at the hands of the “final redactor”—the story of the Unrightful King was radically reinterpreted so as to present Manawydan in a positive light, as a man of virtuous forbearance and prudent counsel. Manawydan, he writes, is “the pragmatist and the peace-maker,” a figure of “patience and tolerance,” and “the protagonist of reason and enlightenment.” He is a figure whose conduct presents “a thoroughgoing criticism of the heroic ideal.” In the story of Manawydan, we noticed earlier, there is for at least some readers an explicit criticism of the heroic way of life.
