J. Koch – Celtic Culture. A Historical Encyclopedia

Автор: J. Koch
Название книги: Celtic Culture. A Historical Encyclopedia
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Культура и Искусство
Страницы: 2187
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

The most comprehensive reference resource on Celtic culture; an encyclopedia written by and for scholars, yet accessible to all.

• 1,500 A–Z entries cover every aspect of Celtic life, from prehistory to the present, with bibliographic references for further reading

• Original articles by the world's finest Celtic scholars

• A comprehensive bibliography of 7,000+ items including both original sources and the most important and up-to-date modern discussions

• 200 drawings and illustrations

• A quick-reference and glossary containing 10,000 entries

This Encyclopedia is designed for the use of everyone
interested in Celtic studies and also for those interested
in many related and subsidiary fields, including the
individual Celtic countries and their languages,
literatures, archaeology, history, folklore, and mythology.
In its chronological scope, the Encyclopedia covers
subjects from the Hallstatt and La Tène periods of
the later pre-Roman Iron Age to the beginning of the
21st century. Geographically, as well as including the
Celtic civilizations of Ireland, Britain, and Brittany
(Armorica) from ancient times to the present, it covers
the ancient Continental Celts of Gaul, the Iberian
Peninsula, and central and eastern Europe, together with
the Galatians of present-day Turkey, and it also follows
the Celtic diaspora into the Americas and Australia.
These volumes represent a major long-term
undertaking which synthesizes fresh research in all areas
with an authoritative presentation of standard information.
The 1569 entries, ranging in length from 100 to
over 10,000 words, cover the field in depth and are fully
integrated with a clear system of internal cross-references
and supported by a 10,000-item Bibliography in
Volume V. The 338 contributors represent the leading
edge of research currently being carried out at all centres
of Celtic studies around the world. The name of the
author appears at the end of each article, or section in
the case of multi-author entries.
For several reasons a project of this scope was felt to
be essential at this time. First of all, as a scholarly, but
accessible, comprehensive overview of Celtic studies,
this Encyclopedia is unique. There is no shortage of
popular and semi-popular volumes with ‘Celtic’ or ‘Celts’
in their titles, but none has aimed to encompass the whole
field with balance and scholarly reliability. At the same
time, there exists a body of specialist publications which
sets standards for the small corps of professional
Celticists. In this narrow context, Celtic studies often
means little more than the historical linguistics of the
Celtic languages. The publications in this category
are often neither accessible in the sense of being readable,
nor dependably maintained in print or widely held in
general library collections. Most of the handbooks and
edited texts that constitute the core works of Celtic
philology date from the mid-20th century or earlier, and
have not been superseded. Even by their own rigorous
and esoteric standards, the expert reference works are a
generation or more out of date, a major pitfall requiring
of Celtic scholars an almost superhuman ‘keeping up
with more recent advances’ to remain current. To put it
metaphorically, the glue holding Celtic studies together
as an academic discipline has grown old and brittle.
The situation with regard to books in Celtic studies—
in which a qualitative gap looms between specialist and
more popular works—mirrors divisions between workers
in the field. Small numbers of professional scholars,
academic departments, and library collections devoted
to Celticity contrast with a vast and growing international
cohort of enthusiasts. This latter category includes both
amateurs and experts in other fields—modern history,
comparative literature, ancient and medieval studies, and
many other disciplines—who are self-taught when it
comes to Celtic studies, owing to the limited availability
of formal instruction in the field. In the light of this
background, this Encyclopedia recognizes a broad need
for full and up-to-date information well beyond the
limited institutional bounds of Celtic studies per se. My
own experience, for example, of teaching Celtic studies
to undergraduates in the United States during the years
1985–1998 was a revelation to me: it showed how little
material was available, and how much was needed as
essential background for newcomers to this fascinating
and rewarding field of study, one so near, yet in many
ways so unreachably far, from Anglo-American
civilization.
Like all subjects in this time of exponentially expanding
information, Celtic studies has tended to fragment
into specialisms, and its experts have neither the resources
nor the training to move easily between subfields—
between languages and periods, for example. Once again,
the unsatisfactory links that bind the field together are
either outdated and arcane or semi-popularized and
intellectually suspect.
Another reason for embarking on a major synthesis
at this time is that archaeological Celtic studies in Britain
underwent a profound crisis of conscience in the late
20th century, and this has continued into the 21st. The
validity of applying the term ‘Celtic’ to any group of
people or culture of any period has been questioned—
especially in connection with the cultural history of
Ireland and Britain, to which the terms ‘Celts’ and ‘Celtic’
were evidently not applied until modern times. In the
wake of this episode of ‘Celtoscepticism’, the relatedness
and common origins of the Celtic family of languages
remain unchallenged scientific facts, and the name ‘Celtic’
for this family—given that all such terms are ultimately
arbitrary—is no more misleading or historically
unjustified than such well-established and undisputed
terms as, say, ‘Germanic’ or ‘Semitic’. On the other hand,
the idea that certain types of non-linguistic culture—
such as artefacts in the La Tène style—can be
meaningfully described as ‘Celtic’ now requires greater
circumspection. There are few, if any, types of artwork,
weapons, or ritual sites, for example, for which it is likely,
or even reasonable, to expect that there would have been
a one-to-one correspondence between those who used
them and speakers of Celtic languages, or speakers of
Celtic languages only, or, conversely, that all speakers of
Celtic languages used them. While north-west and central
Spain, Galatia in Asia Minor, and all of Ireland
(including Munster) were eminently Celtic linguistically—
at least by the Late La Tène period—La Tène
objects of the recognized standard forms are thin on
the ground in these areas. Thus, while this Encyclopedia
is not exclusively nor even primarily about the Celtic
languages, the defining criterion of ‘peoples and countries
that do, or once did, use Celtic languages’ and also an
index of connectedness to the Celtic languages have been
borne in mind when branching out into other cultural
domains, such as art, history, music, and so on, as well
as literature produced in the Celtic countries in English,
Latin, and French. For areas without full literary
documentation, the presence of Celtic place- and group
names has been a key consideration for determining parts
that can be meaningfully considered Celtic. Owing to
the importance of the study of names as diagnostic of
Celticity, the reader will find numerous discussions of
etymology in the entries. The policy of the Encyclopedia
is also to give proper names in their forms in the relevant
Celtic language, where this is practical. Unlike most
countries, for the modern Celtic countries Anglicized
forms of names prevail, or, in the case of Brittany,
Frenchified forms. Merely to find out what is the Gaelic
form of a Scottish place-name, or the Breton form of
one in Brittany, is often difficult, and this in turn can
become a major impediment for those moving on to
research sources in the original languages since they
cannot always be certain whether what they are
encountering is the same place or person or not. The
fact that we are used to seeing Anglicized (and
Frenchified) forms of names on maps—and these only,
unlike the place-names of more widely-spoken
languages—is a major contributing factor to the
invisibility of the Celtic languages, their apparent nonexistence
and seamless incorporation into the core
Anglophone and Francophone areas. Another reason for
supplying Celtic-language forms for names coined in
the Celtic languages is that it is these forms which are
most informative with regard to etymology, explaining
topographical features, genealogical links, dedications
to saints, &c.
Having thus defined the scope of our subject as the
Celtic languages and cultures and the people who used
them from the earliest historical records to the present,
the content of the Encyclopedia has also inevitably been
shaped by the history and predominant projects of Celtic
studies as a field. Since its dual origins in literary
Romanticism and the comparative historical linguistics
of the Indo-European languages, the centre of gravity
of Celtic studies has recognizably remained in the ancient
and early medieval periods, the time of the earliest Celtic
texts and history’s opening horizon that forms the
background to traditional heroes and saints of the Celtic
countries. It is, of course, common origins in these early
times that define the Celtic languages, and their speakers,
as a family—once again, the glue holding the Celtic
studies together as a discipline. Thus, the prominence
given to early evidence and sources of tradition continues
here. Also under the rubric of Celtic origins, we have
given special attention to the Picts, Scots, and Britons
of the north in the early Middle Ages, where Celtic
studies contributes to our understanding of the
emergence of Scotland. But Romanticism and historical
linguistics have also focused attention on modern times
and the future by defining present-day national identities
and aspirations and throwing into relief the special
significance of the Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh,
Breton, and Cornish languages and their uncertain fates.
Here Celtic studies is a vital ingredient in such modern
political processes as the birth of the Irish Republic,
for example, or the currently unfolding and as yet
unresolved developments in devolution within the United
Kingdom and the integration of states and regions within
the European Union. In the middle, between archaic
Celtic origins and modern Celtic identity politics, the
current generation of Celtic scholars are now turning
their attention increasingly to the long-neglected later
medieval and early modern periods, including, for
example, recent work on Classical Irish (or Gaelic) Poetry
and the Welsh Poets of the Nobility, the fruits of both
areas of research being fully reflected here. Recent Celtic
studies has also shared with other humanistic disciplines
a growing interest in contemporary literary theory (see
critical and theoretical perspectives); it is largely
thanks to the influence of feminist theoretical
perspectives, for example, that many entries on recently
discovered or re-evaluated women writers will be found
in the volumes.
How to use this Encyclopedia
This Encyclopedia is largely self-contained; in other
words, it is not anticipated that a second work will be
required to enable the reader to understand the
information in the entries. To find relevant information
shared between related articles, there is a system of crossreferencing.
When it occurs in the text of an entry the
title of a related article (or its first word or words) will
be set in small capitals. These related entries then
appear again, gathered among the references set in small
type at the end of each entry or, in the case of some
longer entries, at the end of each section.
To find a particular piece of information in the
Encyclopedia, the reader can use the unified Table of
Contents (which appears at the beginning of Volume I)
or the Index (in Volume V). For broader categories, the
list of Contents gives the titles of the 1569 entries in
alphabetical order, together with page numbers. The Index
provides a fuller list of subject items in alphabetical
order and lists the Encyclopedia entries and entry sections
relevant to each. The list of entries for each subject
gives an indication of which entry is most relevant to a
particular aspect of the subject: for example, under the
subject ‘Trinity College Dublin’, one finds entries that
include ascendancy; kells, book of; ó cadhain; and
reformation [1]. Within the Index, subjects that are
themselves entry names are set in bold type.
In order to enable the reader to pursue subjects beyond
the scope of the Encyclopedia, a 10,000-item Bibliography—
an unparalleled resource for Celtic studies—
is provided in Volume V. The relevant titles are also
listed, in short form, in the smaller type at the bottom
of each entry (or the ends of sections for some longer
entries). The short titles following the entries are given
in the format: surname of author (or editor, where
relevant) followed by a short title. For articles within
books and journals, the title of the complete volume or
journal (with volume number) and the specific page
numbers follow the author’s surname, rather than the
title of the article or chapter. In many instances, the
reader will find the surname and short title adequate to
locate an item on a shelf or in a catalogue. The full
bibliographical details of each item are provided in the
unified Bibliography in Volume V.
The references gathered at the end of entries recognize
two principal sub-categories: (1) Primary Sources,
meaning written materials that are themselves the object
of study—manuscripts, published literary texts, and
translations of literary texts; (2) Further Reading, that
is, scholarly and critical discussions of the subject