- Course Code
- CE 4575
- Credit Points
- 30
- Course Coordinator
- Dr R O'Connor
Pre-requisites
Available only to students in Programme Year 4 or by permission of the Head of School. Cannot be taken as part of a graduating curriculum with CE 3575 'Celtic Myth in the Modern World: From Ossian to the New Age (A)'.
Notes
This course will be available in 2008/09 and in alternate sessions thereafter.
Overview
This course examines how and why stories and images of a mythical Celtic past came to haunt the modern Western imagination, focusing in particular on Anglophone Britain and Ireland. The Celtic cultures in which these stories were originally produced suffered disastrous political setbacks in the early modern period; but these stories soon attracted much learned and popular interest outside the Celtic-speaking world. Here, sometimes transformed beyond recognition, they have served new purposes: literally, social, religious, political and musical. We will trace these metamorphoses by examining the forms and functions of Celtic legendary narrative in (for example) European Romanticism, Celtic nationalisms, Wagnerian music-drama, Victorian philology, Irish Modernism (Yeats, Joyce and O'Brien), English fantasy fiction (Tolkien and Lewis) and - preying on all these - the omnivorous mediaevalism of the New Age movement. Can we ever hope to see the ancient Celts as they really were? By uncovering the ideological patterns beneath the various forms of modern Celticism, we will at least be able to identify where our preconceptions come from.
Structure
1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week.
Assessment
1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (60%), one 2,000 word essay (30%), and seminar participation (10%).
Resit: 1 one-hour lecture followed by 1 two-hour seminar per week.