1st Edition
Mysticism, Myth and Celtic Identity
Introduction. Part 1: Prehistory and Paganism 1. Druids in Modern British Fiction: The Unacceptable Face of Celticism, Ronald Hutton 2. Old Deities, New Worlds: The Return of the Gods in Fiction Marion Gibson 3. Uncovering the Deepest Layers of the British Past, 1850-1914, Chris Manias 4. "Dreams of Celtic Kings": Victorian Prehistory and the Notion of ‘Celtic’, Rebecca Welshman 5. "The Truth against the World": Spectrality and the Mystic Past in Late Twentieth-Century Cornwall, Carl Phillips Part 2: Gothic, Romance and Landscape 6. ‘Confined to a Living Grave’: Welsh Poetry, Gothic and the French Revolution, Elizabeth Edwards 7. Fingal in the West Country: The Poems of Ossian and Cultural Myth-making in the South West of England, 1770-1800, Dafydd Moore 8. Geological Folklore: Robert Hunt and the Industrial, Aesthetic and Racial Composition of ‘Celtic’ Cornwall, Shelley Trower 9. Celtic Cultural Politics: Monuments and Mortality in Nineteenth-Century Brittany, Maura Coughlin 10. Spirited Away: Highland Touring, ‘Toctor Shonson’, and the Hauntings of Celtism, Peter Merchant Part 3: Memory, Myth and Politics 11. Cornish Crusaders and Barbary Captives: Returns and Transformations, Jo Esra 12. Re-enacting Scottish History in Europe, David Hesse 13. Reconstructing West Wales: Welsh Representations and Cultural Memories of Cornwall, Garry Tregidga 14. From Apocalyptic Paranoia to the Mythic Nation: Political Extremity and Myths of Origin in the Neo-Fascist Milieu, Andrew Fergus Wilson 15. Albion’s Spectre: Building the New Jerusalem, Jason Whittaker
Biography
Marion Gibson is Associate Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Exeter, UK. Her publications include Witchcraft Myths in American Culture (2007), Possession, Puritanism and Print: Darrell, Harsnett, Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Exorcism Controversy (2006) and Reading Witchcraft: Stories of Early English Witches (1990).
Shelley Trower is a Lecturer at the Department of English at the University of Hull, UK. Her publications include Senses of Vibration (2012) and Place, Writing, and Voice in Oral History (2011).
Garry Tregidga is a Senior Lecturer and Assistant Director of the Institute of Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter, UK. His publications include Memory, Place and Identity: The Cultural Landscapes of Cornwall (2012) and Mebyon Kernow and the History of Cornish Nationalism, co edited with Dick Cole and Bernard Deacon (2003).
"Myth Mysticism, and Celtic Identity is an excellent book; it brings together essays from a variety of fields to address historically important and contemporarily relevant questions about the nature of Celtic culture and the continuing status and influence of that culture in the world today." Professor C.W. Sullivan III, East Carolina University, USA
“Mysticism, Myth and Celtic Identity puts present day celticity to the test of scholarship discussion, challenges worn-out or dangerous perceptions and representations, and resets the perceptions and representations of Celtic identity/ies in a multicultural context. Well built and well informed…Mysticism, Myth and Celtic Identity is undeniably thought provoking and is a tribute to the vitality of Celtic studies in Britain.” - Yann Bévant, Université Rennes II – UEB
