'Py ganwyf?' : some terminology for poetry in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Wales

As it has turned out, I have spent more of my time and energy on the Poets of the Princes than on 'hengerdd', and I have thereby managed largely to sidestep the difficult but productive questions that have arisen in recent decades concerning its actual 'heroic age' status. But the work that many and various scholars, including Simon Evans, Geraint Gruffydd, Marged Haycock, Daniel Huws, Graham Isaac, Brynley Roberts, Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, Paul Russell, and others, have done in grappling with those questions has transformed our understanding of literary culture in medieval Wales in ways that affect our understanding of the poets of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Wales as much as they do our understanding of the 'Cynfeirdd'. I will be focusing here on the poetry of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but with a very keen sense of how deeply indebted I am to the various ways of thinking about earlier Welsh poetry — and poetry long thought to be earlier, although perhaps not — that these scholars have introduced into the conversation.