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Subject Area: Celtic Studies
White, Eva Roa2004 0-7734-6237-6 225 pages
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.
Thomas, Neil E.
1994 0-7734-9420-0 144 pages
These essays cover a broad historical sweep from Indo-European origins to the present. Essays include: Weaving-Related Symbolism in Early European Literature; Heinrich von Morungen and the Fairy-Mistress Theme; Second Sight in the Poetry of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff; Cernunnos Arisen: The Celtic Element in Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns (with special reference to the way Hill and other English poets such as Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney have looked back to Celtic mythology as a belief system which gives more scope to natural forces than the Judaeo-Christian tradition); 'Mader er Mannz Gaman': The Theme of Friendship in Old Norse and Old English Wisdom Verse; Cultural Origin and the Presentation of an English Past: How Celtic a Figure is King Arthur in 19th Century English Literature?; The Southey Circle and Scandinavian Mythology and Literature; German Influences in The Mill on the Floss; and The Nibelungenlied and the Third Reich (on the ideological appropriations of the ancient Germanic legacy by the National Socialists). At all times the communal goal has been to view modern problems in an historical perspective which includes a consideration of that racial stereotyping which has sometimes marred our European civilization.
Egan, Sean J.
2002 0-7734-7171-5 252 pages
In addition to examining their games and pastimes, this study examines the Celtic psyche and culture. It examines all the Celtic peoples: Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Isle of Man, Brittany, Basque Region, Icelandic Connections; children’s Celtic games; and dance and music. This book fills a gap in the recreation literature of the warrior people known as the Celts and knits together the common threads that exist between the various Celtic nations.
Martin, Neill
2007 0-7734-5328-8 428 pages
The study examines the form and function of ritual dialogue in marriage traditions, paying particular attention to the betrothal ceremony or rèiteach in Gaelic Scotland, along with analogues in Brittany and Wales, while also exploring the relationship between the ritual dialogues and traditions such as flyting and bardic contest. What emerges is a picture of the multi-referential potential of this form of ritual speech and the symbolic significance which lies behind the surface meaning. The human drama of marriage is seen to be submerged within an all-encompassing symbolic event which adopts as its structure the spirit of conflict, dramatising the give and take of the relationship the community both desires and fears.
Freeman, Philip
2001 0-7734-7480-3 124 pages
The Celtic language of Galatian is a unique example of a language which migrated into the heart of the Greco-Roman world during classical times and there survived for centuries. This study collects and analyses for the first time the entire corpus of the Galatian language, using inscriptions, papyri, and references in the classical authors. The study also explores the linguistic viability of Galatian in ancient Asia Minor and the relation of Galatian to the Celtic languages of western Europe.
Kearney, Milo
1992 0-7734-9536-3 588 pages
The powerful works contained in this study form an epic all their own - a literary triumph whose roots lie in the anxieties and aspirations of the societies which gave them birth. Included for study: Celtic fairy tales and nursery rhymes; Irish bardic literature; the Britano-Welsh material (the Mabinogion); the Germanic epic; Latin Christian verse; Angle poetry; the Icelandic Saga; the crusading epic; medieval religious dramas; Academic satire; French and German Chivalric literature; Italian Franciscan revival verse; the social crisis literature of the 14th century; and the despondent verse of the dying Middle Ages.
Roma, Elisa
2014 0-7734-0055-9 296 pages
This is a multi-authored volume which gathers essays devoted to Early Irish originally presented at the XIV International Congress of Celtic Studies, held in Maynooth, August 1-5, 2011. The topics covered, either from a synchronic or a diachronic perspective, range from phonetics and phonology to morphology and syntax with some semantics.
Herbenick, Raymond M.
2000 0-7734-7738-1 164 pages
This monograph supports and advances the revolutionary views of Celtic scholar David R. Howlett. This work discusses points such as the compositional skill level of the historical St. Patrick and the thematic level of understanding in his use of a pentagonal structure of the Pentateuch, as well as the five collections of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of St. Matthew on which he likely modeled the thematic structure of his Confession according to Howlett. This monograph demonstrates that the historical St. Patrick might well be considered not only as a first-rate Biblical theologian but as a wise monastic spiritual director versed in moral and pastoral theology.
Carneiro, Carlos
2022 1-4955-1010-7 360 pages
This is an oversized (8 x 10), softcover book. "There has not been a recent full-scale scholarly work concerned with the transmission of the beheading-game motif from Irish to Arthurian traditions.... [The present work] is focused on three main points of research: (1) The comparison of the several beheading-game narratives in order to assert their points of connection along with their differences; (2) The analysis of the possibility that Wales functioned as the intermediary between Irish tradition and the English and Continental milieus; (3) The tracing of subsequent channels of transmission of Irish motifs from the possible intermediary to England and the Continent." -from the author's Introduction
Carneiro, Carlos
2022 1-4955-1011-5 348 pages
This is an oversized (8x10), softcover book. The author: "The development of the churlish headless challenger and his variations does ...seem indeed to be a process about which we have quite clear indications due to the literary evidences. Headless figures which retain their conscience post-decapitation are not exclusive to the beheading-game narratives or other medieval narratives involving some form of decapitation, however. Even in hagiographic tradition we have a similar figure in the form of the cephalophore, a headless saint, and to this day there are creatures sound in Irish folk traditions such as the Dullahan: a headless horseman sharing many characteristics with the churlish challengers we have focused on."
Moorman, Charles W.
1993 0-7734-9332-8 176 pages
This book attempts to define a genre, called the literature of defeat, in a context made up of its various historical geneses, characteristic style, individual forms, sustaining symbols and motifs, prevailing themes, and relationship to the mainstream. Its existence seems dependent first of all upon the historical circumstance of a military defeat or civil violation of a culture, and the withdrawal of that culture into itself as a way of life, a set of attitudes, a manner of visualizing things. This study also maintains that the literature of defeat is the chief mode of the insular Celts, who never suffered their defeat and occupation by the English gracefully; but carried with them into their secret places their icons and signs and sacraments, all of which shaped their visual art and writings. This book is an account of the writings, past and present, in Wales and Ireland.
Smith, Gregg A.
2007 0-7734-5353-9 196 pages
Examines the nature and function of the dead in medieval Norse and Celtic literature. It is demonstrated that agents of the living dead in these literatures have a functional and formulaic role, largely manifested as a process of wish-fulfillment. While the authors of these stories provide resonances of past beliefs regarding the dead, they also appear to have adapted these ideas for their own purposes in order to involve the dead as role-players in their stories. This book contains 11 color photographs.
Bernhardt-House, Phillip A.
2010 0-7734-3714-2 520 pages
This book is a typological study of canids and canid imagery in Medieval Celtic cultures. It explores texts ranging from early Irish legal tracts and heroic narrative to exempla from Welsh, Breton, and later Scottish sources.
Thompson, Jack George
1996 0-7734-8760-3 352 pages
This study presents a global view on the early Celtic experiment in gender equality, focusing on pre-Roman Celtic groups (Celtiberi, British, Gaulish) as well as the six major Celtic societies which survived into the Middle Ages (Breton, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Scottish, and Welsh). Employing an interdisciplinary approach, it avoids parochialism by cross-referencing, where possible, Pagan, secular Christian, and Christian Church authors. In the cases of conflicts in dates, all sides of the conflicts, and types of evidence from such varied disciplines as archaeology, history, women's studies, anthropology, classical studies, comparative law, economics, linguistics, political science, and psychology are cited.