The poetry of Celtic places

Abstract

The place of Celts and Celticity in the French imagination shifts radically during the course of the nineteenth century. 1 It is widely accepted that Ernest Renan's essay "La poésie des races celtiques" (Poetry of the Celtic Races) of 1854 is key in this development.Renan is often referred to as the point of departure in any investigation of the dominant images that we have of Brittanyindeed of Celticnesstoday. Along with Matthew Arnold's On Celtic Literature (1867), which is indebted to Renan's text, "La poésie des races celtiques" occupies a key position in the development of Celtic Studies as an academic discipline, and has colored views of Celtic lands and people ever since. The discourse inaugurated by Renan and Arnold has been described as a "Celticism," modeled on Edward Said's "Orientalism" (Mc Cormack 1985, 220; Kiberd 1996, 6), and Arnold's work in embellishing and interpreting Renan has been described as "arguably the most influential piece ever written in the field of Celtic studies" (Chapman 1992, 25).However, it is notable that, despite the mention of "race" in the title of Renan's essay, the discussion of poetry contained within seems to be just as much about place, as a passage near the opening demonstrates:"Le sommet des arbres se dépouille et se tord; la bruyère étend au loin sa teinte uniforme; le granit perce à chaque pas un sol trop maigre pour le revêtir; une mer presque toujours sombre forme à l'horizon un cercle d'éternels gémissements" (The treetops lay themselves bare and writhe; the heather extends its unchanging hue into the distance; at every step granite breaks through a topsoil too thin to clothe it; at the horizon an almost-always somber sea forms a circle of eternal sighs) (1928, 375-376). 2 In what is ostensibly a study of literature, we find a landscape conjured up by a vocabulary of human suffering called on to express a psychological state. 3 The present article explores descriptions of Celtic places that foreground the question of poetry and poeticness, with a focus on travel writing about two Celtic places, Brittany and Wales, by Jules Michelet (1798-1874), the foremost historian of his generation in what was a golden age of French history. Michelet's Breton pages are well known, since the notes in his travel journal for August 1831 were reworked to form the Breton section of his Tableau de la France (1833), before being taken up again in La Mer (1861), to be finally published posthumously as part of his Journal ([1828-1848] 1959). 4 His Welsh pages, on the other hand, have been overlooked, but repay close attention, not least

Cidades Sitiadas: Representações Do Medo Da Morte E Das Enfermidades Na Pandemia Do Covid-19 E Nas Charges Do Final Do Século Xix No Brasil

“…(2016), num contexto em que a autora analisa a sobrevivência no nome do historiador após sua morte. JáWilliams (2019) em seu artigo irá analisar a descrição de lugares Celtas na obra de Michelet, mas analisando os diferentes momentos desse imaginário geográfico e poético, comparando a versão original de Jules da década de 1830 (publicado na década de 1950), e a versão editada de Athénaïs da década de 1890. Análises que abordem a colaboração entre o casal, ao escreverem em conjunto uma série de livros de História Desta forma, este ensaio tem como objetivo apresentar a trajetória de Athénaïs, de seus anos de formação até o casamento com Jules Michelet, seu trabalho como escritora, tanto na produção de obras em colaboração com o marido, quanto suas próprias obras autorais.…”