Classics and Celtic Literary Modernism

Celtic modernism had a complex history with classical reception. In this book, Gregory Baker examines the work of W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, David Jones and Hugh MacDiarmid to show how new forms of modernist literary expression emerged as the evolution of classical education, the insurgent power of cultural nationalisms and the desire for transformative modes of artistic invention converged across Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Writers on the “Celtic fringe” sometimes confronted, and sometimes consciously advanced, crudely ideological manipulations of the inherited past. Yet, even as they did so, their eccentric ways of using the classics and its residual cultural authority animated new decentered idioms of English – literary vernaculars so inflected by polyglot intrusion that they expanded the range of Anglophone literature and left in their wake compelling stories for a new age. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Gregory Baker is Assistant Professor of English and Director of Irish Studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.