Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Theological contexts
- Part II The three kingdoms
- Part III Points of contact
- 8 Constructing the pre-romantic Celt
- 9 Mapping a Gothic Europe
- 10 The varieties of Gothicism in the British Atlantic world, 1689–1800
- 11 Conclusion
- Index
8 - Constructing the pre-romantic Celt
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Theological contexts
- Part II The three kingdoms
- Part III Points of contact
- 8 Constructing the pre-romantic Celt
- 9 Mapping a Gothic Europe
- 10 The varieties of Gothicism in the British Atlantic world, 1689–1800
- 11 Conclusion
- Index
Summary
Since the nineteenth century we have become accustomed to the notion of a vast historic gulf between the characters, values and achievements of the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon worlds. However, in recent decades, scholars working in a number of different fields have begun to dismantle this paradigm. Some anthropologists, using core–periphery models, have even gone as far as to suggest that Celtic is an empty category signifying ‘otherness’ whose fluctuating cultural definition has depended more on the vague prejudices of the centre than the actuality of the periphery. Less contentiously, cultural historians have revealed the origins of the modern duality of Celt and Saxon: the twin influences of romanticism and racialism forged the modern myth of the Celt, and contributed to the emergence of related phenomena such as the ideology of pan-Celtic nationalism. The opposition of the pragmatic, freedom-loving Teuton and the mystical, sentimental, but improvident Celt was not a feature of early modern ethnic stereotyping. This romantic conception of the Celt took shape gradually, beginning with the Ossianic vogue of the late eighteenth century, and culminated in the vision of the high-minded Celt peddled by Matthew Arnold. In the interim the romantic Celt had been appropriated by Teutonic racialists as the hapless antithesis of the vigorous and prosperous Saxon. Pan-Celticism has even shallower roots in ethnological thought, and flowered in the late nineteenth century when contacts were established between land leaguers and Gaelic nationalists in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands.
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- Information
- British Identities before NationalismEthnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800, pp. 185 - 210Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999