01704--Celtic Revival

Celtic Revival is a term sometimes applied to the period of Irish literature in English (c.1885-1939) now more often referred to as the Irish Literary Revival or Renaissance. There are other similar terms: Celtic Renaissance, Celtic Dawn, and Celtic Twilight. These Celtic titles are misleading as descriptions of the broader Irish Revival, but they indicate a significant factor in the early phase of the movement: Celticism involves an idea of Irishness based on fanciful notions of innate racial character outlined by the English critic Matthew Arnold in On the Study of Celtic Literature (1866), in which Celtic traits are said to include delicacy, charm, spirituality, and ineffectual sentimentality. This image of Irishness was adopted in part by W. B. Yeats in his attempt to create a distinctively Irish literature with his dreamy early verse and with The Celtic Twilight (1893), a collection of stories based on Irish folklore and fairy-tales.