ENG 894 Celtic Revivals
This seminar provides an in-depth study of the intellectual history, key controversies and deep connection between the Irish Literary Revival of the 1890s, the Scottish Renaissance of the 1920s, and later, the emergence of modernism and anti-modernism in twentieth-century Wales, Cornwall and Northern Ireland. Central to the course is a comparative examination of Celtic nationalism and stylistic experiment in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Students consider the complex relation between literary modernism and forms of language purism, analyzing the impact these forces had on attempts to create new national literary idioms for the 'Celtic nations'. Writers will include but are not limited to W. B. Yeats, Douglas Hyde, James Joyce, Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Muir, Saunders Lewis, David Jones, Caradoc Evans and Henry Jenner.