Mary-Ann Constantine

Short Biography

Mary-Ann Constantine took her first degree in English Literature at Clare College, Cambridge, where she also completed a Ph.D. in Breton oral literature. From 1995 she held a succession of Research Fellowships in the Welsh Department, University of Aberystwyth. During this period she taught various topics in Welsh and Celtic Studies, and published Breton Ballads (1996). She joined the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies as leader of a project on the Welsh radical stonemason and literary forger Iolo Morganwg in March 2002. She was made Senior Research Fellow in 2007. Constantine's main interest is in the literature and the literary lives of the Romantic period, and especially in the interactions between so-called ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms, and between oral and written sources. Her work in the past has looked at the transformation of folk material, such as the oral ballads of Brittany, by collectors and editors for a literate (and Romantic) public. The vexed issues of authenticity and ownership, and the weight attached to such ‘national’ traditions, are also central to her work on Iolo Morganwg and Welsh cultural identity. Her most recent book, The Truth against the World: Iolo Morganwg and Romantic Forgery (2007) is a detailed comparison of Iolo with other supposed literary ‘forgers’ of the period, James Macpherson, Thomas Chatterton and the Breton Hersart de La Villemarqué.