Celtic Revival

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Celtic cross in Quebec (Compare with this original.

Celtic Revival covers a variety of movements and trends, mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries, which drew on the traditions of Celtic literature and Celtic art, or in fact more often what art historians call Insular art. Although the revival was complex and multifaceted, occurring across many fields and in various countries in North-West Europe, its best known incarnation is probably the Irish Literary Revival, also called the Celtic Twilight. Here, Irish writers including William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, "AE" Russell, Edward Martyn and Edward Plunkett (AKA Lord Dunsany) stimulated a new appreciation of traditional Irish literature and Irish poetry in the late 19th and early 20th century.

In many, but not all, facets the revival came to represent a reaction to modernisation. This is particularly true in Ireland, where the relationship between the archaic and the modern was antagonistic, where history was fractured, and where, according to Terry Eagleton, "as a whole [the nation] had not leapt at a bound from tradition to modernity". It was a corollary, and part of, the general movement of medievalism; it came to be recognised that England too had a pre-Saxon Celtic heritage.

Perhaps the most widespread and lasting contribution of the Revival was the re-introduction of the Celtic Cross shape used in the medieval high crosses, which now forms a familiar part of monumental and funerary art over most of the Westernized world.

History

Antiquarian researches into the Celtic culture and history of the British Isles gathered pace from the late 17th century, with people like Owen Jones in Wales and Charles O'Conor in Ireland. The key surviving manuscript sources were gradually located, edited and translated, monuments identified and published, and other essential groundwork in recording stories, music and language done. The Welsh antiquarian and author Iolo Morganwg fed the growing fascination in all things Celtic by founding the Gorsedd, which (along with his writings) would in turn spark the Neo-druidism movement. Interest in Scottish Gaelic culture greatly increased during the onset of the Romantic period in the late 18th century, with James MacPherson's Ossian achieving international fame, along with the novels of Sir Walter Scott and the poetry and song lyrics of the London-based Irishman Thomas Moore, Byron's friend and executor. Throughout Europe, the Romantic movement inspired a great revival of interest in folklore, folk tales, and folk music; even Beethoven was commissioned to produce a set of arrangements of Scottish folk-songs. As elsewhere, in what was then the United Kingdom of the whole archipelago, this encouraged and fed off a rise in nationalism, which was especially intense in Ireland.

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Celtic-style tattoo

In the mid-19th century the revival continued, with Sir Samuel Ferguson, the Young Ireland movement and others in Ireland, and a great army, now almost entirely forgotten, of popularizing writers of folk tales, dubious works of history, and other material at work in all the nations with a claim to be Celtic. At the same time, archaeological and historical work was beginning to make progress in constructing a better understanding of Celtic history. Interest in ornamental Celtic art developed, and Celtic motifs began to be used in all sorts of contexts, including architecture, drawing on works like the Grammar of Ornament by (another) Owen Jones. Imitations of the ornate Insular penannular brooches of the 7-9th centuries were worn by Queen Victoria among others from the late 1840s, many produced in Dublin by West & Son and other makers. Celtic motifs continue to be used in many popular contexts such as tattoos.

1900–20

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Modern copper jar, using a Celtic motif in restrained fashion.

The Irish Celtic Revival movement encouraged the creation of works written in the spirit of Irish culture, as distinct from English culture. This was, in part, due to the political need for an individual Irish identity. This difference was kept alive by invoking Ireland's historic past, its myths, legends and folklore.There was an attempt to re-vitalize the native rhythm and music of Irish Gaelic. Figures such as Lady Gregory, W.B. Yeats, George Russell, J.M. Synge and Sean O'Casey wrote many plays and articles about the political state of Ireland at the time. Gaelic revival and Irish nationalism frequently overlapped in Gaelic Revival hangouts such as An Stad, a tobacconist on North Frederick Street owned by the writer Cathal McGarvey and frequented by literary figures such as James Joyce and Yeats, along with leaders of the Nationalist movement such as Douglas Hyde, Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins. These were connected with another great symbol of the literary revival, The Abbey Theatre, which served as the stage for many new Irish writers and playwrights of the time.

In 1892, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy said,

"A group of young men, among the most generous and disinterested in our annals, were busy digging up the buried relics of our history, to enlighten the present by a knowledge of the past, setting up on their pedestals anew the overthrown statues of Irish worthies, assailing wrongs which under long impunity had become unquestioned and even venerable, and warming as with strong wine the heart of the people, by songs of valour and hope; and happily not standing isolated in their pious work, but encouraged and sustained by just such an army of students and sympathizers as I see here to-day."

The Celtic Revival (also often referred to as the "Celtic Twilight") was an international movement. The Irish American designer Thomas Augustus "Gus" O’Shaughnessy made a conscious choice to connect his art with Irish design roots. Louis Sullivan the Chicago architect incorporated dense Celtic-inspired interlace in the ornament of his buildings. Sullivan's father was a traditional Irish musician and they both were step-dancers, showing how his creativity was not just rooted in his official education. Trained in stained glass and working in an Art Nouveau style, O’Shaughnessy designed a series of windows and interior stencils for Old Saint Patrick’s Church in Chicago, a project begun in 1912.

The "plastic style" of early Celtic art was one of the elements feeding into Art Nouveau decorative style, very consciously so in the work of designers like the Manxman Archibald Knox, who did much work for Liberty & Co., especially for the Tudric and Cymric ranges of metalwork, respectively in pewter and silver or gold. Many of the most extravagant examples of the plastic style come from the modern Czech Lands, and influenced the Czech Art Nouveau designer and artist Alphonse Mucha.

Interlace, which is still seen as a "Celtic" form of decoration, somewhat ignoring its Germanic origins and equally prominent place in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian medieval art, has remained a motif in many forms of popular design, especially in Celtic countries, and above all Ireland, where it remains a national style signature. In recent decades it had a re-revival in 1960s design, for example in the Biba logo, and has been used worldwide in tattoos, and in various contexts and media in fantasy works with a quasi-Dark Ages setting. The Secret of Kells is an animated feature film of 2009 set during the creation of the Book of Kells which makes much use of Insular design.

Cornwall

The term Celtic Revival is sometimes used to refer to the Cornish cultural Celtic revival of the early twentieth century. This was characterised by an increased interest in the Cornish language started by Henry Jenner and Robert Morton Nance in 1904. The Federation of Old Cornwall Societies was formed in 1924 to "maintain the Celtic spirit of Cornwall", followed by the Gorseth Kernow in 1928 and the formation of the Cornish political party Mebyon Kernow in 1951. This revival has spread across the Irish sea towards Northern England, with the attempted reconstructions of numerous types of bagpipe (such as the Lancashire Great-pipe) and an increased interest in the Northumbrian smallpipes. There are also attempts to reconstruct the Cumbric language, the ancient Brythonic language of Northern (particularly Northwestern) England, a remnant of the celtic kingdoms of Hen Ogledd. The Gallaic Revival Movement is reconstructing the Gallaic language also known as the Gallaecian language.

See also

• Gaelic revival
• Irish poetry
• List of Irish poets
• Scottish Renaissance

Sources

• Brown, Terence (ed.), Celticism (1996), ISBN 9051839987.
• Castle, Gregory. Modernism and the Celtic Revival. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Foster, R. F. (1997). W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage. New York: Oxford UP. ISBN 0-19-288085-3.
• Foster, R. F. (2003). W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. II: The Arch-Poet 1915–1939. New York: Oxford UP. ISBN 0-19-818465-4.

External links

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• The National Library of Ireland's exhibition, Yeats: The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats
• A Journey into Ireland's Literary Revival