Le Celtic Revival autour de 1900 : le courant de renaissance de l'héritage celtique en littérature et arts plastiques dans les Iles Britanniques (1883-1926)

Details

Supervisors

Roucloux, Joël

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en histoire de l'art et archéologie, orientation générale

Abstract

enThe Celtic Revival is a trend of rebirth of ornament and Celtic iconography in the British Isles around the XIXth and XXth centuries. It is a interdisciplinary trend, dealing with many spheres of cultural life, literature, plastic arts among others, with a particular interest on applied arts. This trend, academic, folklorist and roughly archaeological at its beginnings, will become, influenced by the Arts & Crafts movement and a tense Irish political context, a trend of cultural and artistic research of an Irish cultural identity, in which the artists will manage to create a cultural identity different than England’s. This Irish cultural identity, diffused by the Irish diaspora and the Arts & Crafts’ European contacts, will spread across Europe and the United States. This master’s thesis has for objective to present and analyse the productions of the Revivalist trend in the British Isles, to look in which graduation the Celtic ornament and iconography had been used in this quest for an Irish cultural identity and to perceive in which way the Romantic and the Arts & Crafts movement had been influencing the Celtic Revival trend. It’ll be divided in three parts. The first one will be looking on the Celtic world in the Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. In this part, we’ll looking Celtic art, Celtic pantheon and personalities, then ornament survivance in medieval England and then the rediscovery of Celtic heritage in the Early Modern England, with the discovery of Stonehenge and the Druidic Revival. The second one will be exclusively about the Celtic Revival, analyzing the productions of the Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English groups. In Ireland, particularly we’ll looking at how the trend is used by the artists to diffuse their artistic and political views within Ireland’s nationalistic agenda, with a great influence by the Yeats family. The third and last part, will be talking about the presence of Celts in the contemporary world, mostly within the fantasy genre and the rise of Celtic music.