Parker, Joanne, ed. The Harp and the Constitution: Myths of
Celtic and Gothic Origin. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
Reviewed by Máire Johnson (mjohns38@emporia.edu)
This interesting collection of essays from a variety of
specialists, including scholars of literature, history, and archaeology, dives
into the intriguing and timely discussion of concepts of identity primarily in
Britain, France, and Spain in the last three hundred years. It is divided into
two parts; Part One provides five essays focused largely on the usages of the
concept of 'Gothic' identity and symbolism, while Part Two offers six essays
that highlight the notion of the 'Celtic', both in Britain and on the
continent. It is followed by a select bibliography.
Increasingly the political and cultural tendency of modern
society has been toward ethnic, regional, and cultural distinction, nearly
always in reaction to significant events such as war, radical terrorism, or
economic struggle. These papers add to the mounting body of study that
demonstrates the fluidities of the resulting concepts of identity. Though the
collection focuses on the uses of the Gothic and Celtic, the observations made
by these scholars nevertheless (sometimes explicitly) throw into question not
only the ways in which ideas of ethnicity or nationality are fundamentally
adaptive and opportunistic—i.e., they seize upon the prevailing political or
cultural climate to promote a specific image that then shifts as events warrant
or compel—but also how frequently these ideas are based on incomplete, even
inaccurate assumptions. At the same time, regardless of how faulty these
arguments may be, their persistence indicates very real and complex processes
operating within and promoting them; study of these processes, therefore,
repays us with an expanded understanding of the milieus in which they were
developed.
From Joanne Parker's introduction to the final essay by John
Collis, The Harp and the Constitution highlights the critical component of
opposition inherent in the terminology of Celt and Goth beginning in the
ancient and early medieval periods, when the peoples labeled by these names
were seen as tribal identities distinct from and often as enemies of the Roman
Empire in works like those of Caesar, Tacitus, or Jordanes. The authors show
how this opposition was then seized upon in the early modern and modern periods
to build paradigms of regional, ethnic, or national identity. The resistance of
the historical Celts and Goths to expanding Roman hegemony subsequently became
the model for all northern European nations who wanted to define themselves as
(among other things) non-Catholic, non-Mediterranean/Greco-Roman, innocent of
the corruption of the indolent Mediterranean/Catholic world, and possessed of
traits like battle bravery and "strong moral fibre" (2). In exploring
these types of national identity formation, The Harp and the Constitution also
reveals the ever-shifting tensions and alliances in Great Britain in the last
three hundred or so years, as well as underlining parallel processes on the
continent.
Joep Leerssen, for example, launches Part One and the main
body of the book with an assessment of the classical and medieval descriptions
of both the Celts and the Goths that underlie modern European notions of
self-identification, not only for Britain but also for regions like Belgium and
France. These national identities, Leerssen shows, not only fully adopt the
concept that non-Roman tribes of the classical era embodied the primal, the
untrammeled, and the uncontaminated, in direct opposition to the laziness,
luxury, and general moral laxity of the Mediterranean, but also weave those
traits to their current realities. The Celt and the Goth then become "the
narrative template" of indigenous peoples "manfully resisting foreign
encroachment and hegemony," whether that encroachment was the Roman
Empire, as in Tacitus, the Catholic papacy (to Protestants), or the Protestant
Reformation (to Catholics) (17). Leerssen calls this habit of looking to the
presumed tribal ancestry of a nation to discover modern national traits (like
virtus, independence, liberty, and defense against foreign rule)
"democratic primitivism," and considers it the root of the cultural
self-definition for much of northern Europe (19). Ultimately, Leerssen
observes, the adoption of either "Celt" or "Goth" depends
entirely upon cultural, political, and social trends of the moment; the usage
of either identifier thus reflects the shifts in a region's idealized
self-definition. Leerssen's even-handed, thoughtful analysis lays a strong and
important foundation not only for the essays of Part One, which section it
begins, but also for the collection as a whole.
Nick Groom continues this elucidation of modern
identity-formation based on concepts of opposition drawn from the
"Gothic." Groom discusses, for example, the ways in which the Goths
were used to promote political union between Scotland and England on the basis
of a presumed shared "Gothic" ancestry and the alleged superiority of
the "Gothick Constitution" (32). This constitution comprised the jury
trial, the protection of freedom, and the resistance to absolutism, which here
became equated with papal encroachment into the Protestant world of
post-Reformation Britain. Robert DeMaria, Jr., turns to Samuel Johnson's
accidental participation in the Gothic movement in his History of the English
Language and Dictionary of the English Language. Though Johnson usually focused
on classical antecedents for the English language and identity, he also used
British nationalism, concepts of the English language and people as having
north-European origins, and the view of northern European traits as superseding
the contributions of southern ones to the language and culture of Britain to
express his own political concerns. Tom Duggett, on the other hand, examines
William Wordsworth's promotion of the so-called "Madras system" of
public education in early nineteenth-century Britain through the vehicle of
Gothic Romance. To Wordsworth, the "Madras system" aligned the
pedagogy of Britain's children with "progressive Gothic politics"
like the "redemption of the ancient constitution in Britain" and the
furthering of Anglicanism. Joanne Parker finishes out Part One by revealing the
forces that fed popular views of the "Gothic" King Alfred (and the
Celtic King Arthur, though differently) as a national icon capable of modeling
the best handling of nineteenth-century issues from a safe remove. These forces
included greater public access to primary sources due to increased antiquarian
activity, patriotic pride in British expansionism and its resultant desire to
find the "real" native culture of Britain, the promotion of concepts
of the Middle Ages as a pure age in opposition to a "callous industrial
age," and the rise of Romanticism as a reaction against the classicism of
Augustan literature.
The six essays of Part Two shift attention from the Gothic
to the Celtic; as with the analyses of Part One the theme of identity formed in
opposition predominates. The mythologies and histories of the Celtic peoples,
both real and imagined, have been made the same kinds of tools in forming
national identities as the Goths, and often for the same reasons. Just as
antiquarian interest had led to the nineteenth-century dominance of the
"Gothic" Alfred over the Celtic Arthur, so also antiquarianism
contributed to a resurgent emphasis on the importance of the Druids in the
eighteenth century, as examined by Ronald Hutton. The Druids were particularly
attractive, Hutton shows, because classical writers respected them more than
they did the Germanic tribes, and British self-definition in the 1700s still
looked in part to the Mediterranean for inspiration. Tim Fulford carries the discussion
of the Druids into the nineteenth century. Fulford's essay reveals that William
Wordsworth and Robert Southey each viewed England's Lake District stone
rings—which they presumed to be Druidic ritual sites and therefore Celtic—as
reminders that the England of their day needed to revivify an idealized past in
which the "Celtic" played a significant role; their literary Druids,
as had both the Gothic Alfred and the Celtic Arthur, thus confronted
contemporary problems such as modernization, industrialization,
commercialization, and colonialism.
Dafydd Moore demonstrates that Richard Hole's main poetic
inspiration for Arthur; or the Northern Enchantment was the Ossianic poems of
James MacPherson. Hole valued these "Celtic" works in no small part
because they provided material for a national epic that was not based on Homer
(147). Because Hole wrote during a period when British self-definition
primarily turned toward the Germanic, his vision of Britishness was not widely
embraced; Arthur would, however, become a significant element in Tennyson's
Idylls of the King almost a hundred years later. In a similar illustration of
persistence, Amy Hale shows how depictions of the Archangel Michael as the
protector of the Celtic Britons by groups like the British Israelites laid a
strong Celtic layer in the foundations of British identity that is quite alive
today, as is, in some quarters, the view of Michael as a national saint to and
redeemer of the British people.
Both Part Two's assessment of the Celtic and the volume as a
whole wrap up with two essays that provide continental parallels to the process
of national identity development in Britain, echoing the chapter by Joep
Leerssen at the beginning of Part One. Juan Miguel Zarandona's discussion of
Galician literary giants, Eduardo Pondal and Ramón Cabanillas, shows how they
drew upon Ossianic poetry, Roman texts, ancient archaeology, and medieval Irish
and continental records to produce a specifically Celtic Galician literary
culture that still remains a potent concept in the twenty-first century—despite
the reality that the Galician region appears to have been only a relatively
minor center of Celtic tribal activity. Much the way erroneous views of the
Druids have been appropriated to form a British identity, so also the Celts
have been adopted as symbols of Galician independence and resistance, first to
Rome, then to the Visigoths, then to Islamic rule, and finally to Spain itself.
Similarly, just as the historical realities of figures like King Arthur or King
Alfred do not always impact their persistence in British culture, so also
historicity is not relevant to the vibrancy of the Celtic Galician literary
world.
Finally, John Collis examines the Celtic Gauls as a
substrate for French self-definition. Archaeology, toponymy, and textual
evidence here intertwine with political culture in the search for the presumed
Gallic ancestry of modern France. Just as the Galician region of Spain sought
Celtic roots as a paradigm of difference from other polities, including Spain
itself, so also French scholars and politicians used the Celtic Gauls as
symbols of a French resistance to internal and external threats. The national
hero of France became Vercingetorix, the Gaul famed for leading the Gallic
confederation against Julius Caesar's expansionism, and the three main sites
associated with Vercingetorix—Bibracte, where Vercingetorix was chosen as the
battle commander; Gergovia, where he defeated Julius Caesar; and Alesia, where
he was captured and the Gallic confederation fell to Rome—were refigured as
focal points of French identity, archaeological excavation, and preservation.
The intensity of this attention, Collis shows, has been highest during periods
of particular political ferment, such as during the Vichy regime or under the
rule of Napoléon III, but the attitudes that resulted are still taught in
French schools.
There are a few minor errors throughout. Page 14, note 2,
reads "The standard works remains;" this should either be "The
standard work remains" or "The standard works remain." The s/z
spelling of "Gothicise" is inconsistent on page 58. There are some
missing commas or hyphens here or there, and a few missing words (such as
"the" lacking from p. 114, line 24 [should read "with the least"]).
"Is" on p. 151, line 20 should be "it" and
"Voraigne" on p. 176 line 22 and note 2 should be
"Voragine." Similarly "prophesies" on p. 177, line 17
should be "prophecies," "Bretons," p. 193 line 4 of text
quite possibly should be "Britons," and "aware of it", p.
199, line 8, should be "aware of them" (the Celtic roots). There are a couple of missing Irish fadas, as
in the word Gabhála, p. 192, line 15 and Túatha, p. 192, line 23. The comma on
p. 177, line 1 after "St" should more properly be a period.
Capitalization is occasionally inconsistent, and some spaces need to be
inserted, as on p. 175, line 14, between "Celtic" and
"spiritualities," and on p. 177, note 4, between
"Secundeis" and "1508." None of these issues, however, in
any way detract from the arguments or conclusions of the volume's papers.
This collection is multi-disciplinary and thoughtful, and
its discussions are particularly pertinent in today's political and social
climate. These eleven essays reveal that many concepts of identity and
nationalism are based on faulty or incomplete data, and that they readily
change as cultural mores shift. None of these facts, however, deflate the
importance or upend the persistence of the resulting assumptions; instead,
their adoption into a nation's self-definition makes them all but impervious to
challenge. Indeed, as Leerssen writes in this volume, "what matters in
this type of discourse and rhetoric is . . . the moral exemplar," which
depends almost entirely upon the prevailing political, social, and cultural
environment (24–5). Observing the patterns of identity formation in Britain,
France, or Spain in the last three hundred years further suggests templates for
similar contemporary and future patterns; this volume of essays thus offers an
excellent place to begin.
Máire Johnson, Emporia State University
