The Secret of the Celts Revisited
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20487392 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jacqueline Borsje (Religious Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 130-155 |
| Publication date | 2017-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religion and Theology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1023-0807 • E-ISSN: 1574-3012 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1163/15743012-02401007 |
| OpenAlex | W2618481020 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 5 |
What makes the Celts so popular today? Anton van Hamel and Joep Leerssen published on the popularity of imagery connected with pre-Christian Celts, Van Hamel seeing the holistic worldview and Leerssen mysteriousness as appealing characteristics. They explain waves of ‘Celtic revival’ that washed over Europe as reaction and romanticising movements that search for alternatives from contemporaneous dominant culture. Each period has produced its modernized versions of the Celtic past. Besides periodical heightened interest in things Celtic, Van Hamel saw a permanent basis of attraction in Celtic texts, which accommodate ‘primitive’ and romantic mentalities. This article also analyses Celtic Christianity (through The Celtic Way by Ian Bradley and The Celtic Way of Prayer by Esther de Waal) on the use of Celtic texts and imagery of Celtic culture. Two case studies are done (on the use of the Old-Irish Deer’s Cry and the description of a nineteenth-century Scottish ritual). Both the current search for ‘spirituality’ and the last wave of ‘Celtic revival’ seem to have sprung from a reaction movement that criticizes dominant religion/culture and seek inspiration and precursors in an idealized past. The roots of this romantic search for a lost paradise are, however, also present in medieval Irish literature itself. Elements such as aesthetics, imaginative worlds and the posited lost beauty of pre-industrial nature and traditional society are keys in explaining the bridges among the gap between ‘us’ and the Celts. The realization that Celtic languages are endangered or dead heightens the feeling of loss because they are the primary gates towards this lost way of (thinking about) life
Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Celtic languages · Christianity · Irish · Literature · Pilgrimage · Romance · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Irish and British Studies · Philosophy
The geographical orientation of Ireland in Isidore and Orosius
Pagan past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature
From Religion to Spirituality-Megatrend in Contemporary Society or Methodological Artefact? A Contribution to the Secularization Debate from Psychology of Religion
The Last Tormentor of Christ
The Erosion of the Stereotype of the Last Tormentor of Christ
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |