White, Eva Roa

Dr. Eva Roa White is Assistant Professor of British Literature and Chair of the Humanities Division at William Penn University.

A Case Study of Ireland and Galicia’s Parallel Paths to Nationhood

2004 0-7734-6237-6
This is an important original study that contributes new knowledge in the field of Celtic Studies as it offers serious consideration to the connections between Ireland and Galicia Dr. White traces the connections between these two Celtic lands through literature, history, mythology and science. White shows that Ireland and Galicia had parallel cultural and national awakenings in the nineteenth century. She demonstrates how these awakenings had roots in the native language movements and how that connection between language and cultural identity eventually led to national identity and political action towards autonomy. Dr. White specifically recounts the role played by elite members such as W.B. Yeats and Vicente Risco and associations such as the Gaelic League and as Irmandades da Fala. White also discusses the role of language as socio-political tool in the works of nineteenth-century national poets, Thomas Moore for Ireland and Rosalía de Castro for Galicia and their twentieth-century counterparts: Seamus Heaney and Celso Emilio Ferreiro. Finally, Dr. White introduces a new term peripheral colonialism to describe Ireland and Galicia’s condition as unofficial colonies of England and Spain respectively.