These ten essays by scholars from a number of disciplines, are part of a major research project that investigates the notion of the Celts and suggests new directions for future study. The essays discuss Celtic music, representation of Celts in film and TV, folklore, spirituality, festivals, education and tourism.

Utilizing the techniques developed by renowned local historian W. G. Hoskins in his landmark study published 50 years ago, "Local History in England," this book demonstrates how local history has evolved as a discipline over the last half century. Fifteen historians write about a variety of local history subjects that are significant in their own right but which also point to current trends in the field. They show how local historians use their sources systematically, from the nonverbal evidence of buildings to various types of electronic sources. All periods between the middle ages and the early twenty-first century are explored, covering many parts of England from Skye to the Kent coast and discussing topics that include social, economic, religious, legal, intellectual, and cultural history.

Questions traditional conceptualisations of Celticity that rely on a homogeneous interpretation of what it means to be a Celt in contemporary society.

Mysticism, Myth and Celtic Identity explores how the mythical and mystical past informs national imaginations. Building on notions of invented tradition and myths of the nation, it looks at the power of narrative and fiction to shape identity, with particular reference to the British and Celtic contexts. The authors consider how aspects of the past are reinterpreted or reimagined in a variety of ways to give coherence to desired national groupings, or groups aspiring to nationhood and its 'defence'. The coverage is unusually broad in its historical sweep, dealing with work from prehistory to the contemporary, with a particular emphasis on the period from the eighteenth century to the present. The subject matter includes notions of ancient deities, Druids, Celticity, the archaeological remains of pagan religions, traditional folk tales, racial and religious myths and ethnic politics, and the different types of returns and hauntings that can recycle these ideas in culture. Innovative and interdisciplinary, the scholarship in Mysticism, Myth and Celtic Identity is mainly literary but also geographical and historical and draws on religious studies, politics and the social sciences. Thus the collection offers a stimulatingly broad number of new viewpoints on a matter of great topical relevance: national identity and the politicization of its myths.

Corpus-based translation studies has become a major paradigm and research methodology and has investigated a wide variety of topics in the last two decades. The contributions to this volume add to the range of corpus-based studies by providing examples of some less explored applications of corpus analysis methods to translation research. They show that the area keeps evolving as it constantly opens up to different frameworks and approaches, from appraisal theory to process-oriented analysis, and encompasses multiple translation settings, including (indirect) literary translation, machine (assisted)-translation and the practical work of professional legal translators. The studies included in the volume also expand the range of application of corpus applications in terms of the tools used to accomplish the research tasks outlined.

This volume provides accounts of well-established themes of general Celtic inquiry from new theoretical perspectives, in addition to addressing new areas of research that have remained largely unexplored. The collection includes contributions by both established and young scholars on diverse aspects of culture, literature and linguistics, reflecting the multidisciplinary character of current trends in Celtology. The linguistic section of the book includes chapters dealing with Welsh phonology and possible areas of influence of the Brittonic language on English, as well as with the issues of translating culture-specific aspects of medieval Welsh texts and the problems of standardising Irish orthography and font. The second part of the volume is devoted to literature and considers neglected, and heretofore unexplored, aspects of Welsh-language poetry, fiction and children’s literature, the work of John Cowper Powys, and Scottish film in the theoretical context of post-humanism. Approaching these issues from different angles and using different methodologies, the collection highlights the connections between long-established academic areas of interest and popular culture, broadening the horizon of Celtic scholarship.

This book addresses the practices of consumption in tourism, a major theme in the sociology of tourism. To date, most tourism analysis has tended to concentrate on the production of tourist space, and assume that tourism consumption simply mirrors the intentions of the producers. By focussing on a number of relevant sub-themes, such as age, gender, religion and sexual orientation, the chapters within this book critically examine such assumptions in terms of the interplay between the production and consumption of tourist spaces, and how patterns of tourism consumption are negotiated on an individual level.

This book examines the origins of Ireland in its first independent incarnation, the Irish Free State (1922-1937). It explores how contemporary public relations and propaganda techniques were used to construct an identity for this new state – a state which after enduring seven years of insurrection and civil war, became one of the most stable democracies in Europe. This stability, the book argues, was constructed not solely through policies enacted by governments, but through the construction of a Gaelic, Catholic and Celtic national identity. By shifting the perspective to how nation building was communicated, it weaves an interdisciplinary narrative that initiates a new understanding of nation building - providing insights of increasing relevance in current world events. Avoiding a simplistic cause and effect history of public relations, the book examines the uses and effects of early public relations from a political and societal perspective and suggests that while governments were only modestly successful in their varied propaganda efforts, cumulatively they facilitated a transition from violence to peace. This will be of interest to researchers and advanced students with an interest in public relations, propaganda studies, nation building and Irish studies.

This collection is the first to examine how the city is written in modern Irish fiction. Focusing on the multi-faceted, layered, and ever-changing topography of the city in Irish writing, it brings together studies of Irish and Northern Irish fictions which contribute to a more complete picture of modern Irish literature and Irish urban cultural identities. It offers a critical introduction to the Irish city as it represented in fiction as a plural space to mirror the plurality of contemporary Irish identities north and south of the border. The chapters combine to provide a platform for new research in the field of Irish urban literary studies, including analyses of the fiction of authors including James Joyce, Roddy Doyle, Kate O’Brien, Hugo Hamilton, Kevin Barry, and Rosemary Jenkinson. An exciting and diverse range of fictions is introduced and examined with the aim of generating a cohesive perspective on Irish urban fictions and to stimulate further discussion in this emerging area.