Overview

Since its annexation to the British Crown, Ireland has never ceased in forming the subject of an ardent national debate in Great Britain which resulted in the demonisation of the Celtic race as subaltern and backward. In its effort to forge a national identity, the British Empire adopted several collective identities on the basis of the racial and cultural findings of the 1850s which gave a new impetus to the systematic view of England as a typically Anglo-Saxon culture, staunchly opposed to the alleged Celtic backwardness and the rebellious spirit of the Irish. In view of the rising anti-Irish wave of sentiment in the British imperialist imagination, Irish nationalism was manifest through a series of uprisings, the majority of which sought to link the country to its ancient Celtic heritage. The Celticist movements of Young Ireland and the Irish Revival revealed the need of Irish Nationalists to acquire a new, collective identity, which proved to be a strenuous task, given the complex historical and ethnic background of the Irish.This book investigates the extent to which Irish identity is affected by the racist and nationalist discourses of the nineteenth century which emerged to either defend or oppose the image of Ireland as a cultural construct. The travelogues explored here include some of the most fundamental representations of Ireland by prominent Irish and British travel writers, whose impressions of the island might be linked to the utopian and dystopian dimensions of the country.

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9781527519312

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Dimitrios Kassis holds a PhD from the Faculty of English Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, with a doctoral thesis entitled ""Representations of the North in Victorian Travel Literature"". He also received Master's degrees in Education Studies and Translation Studies from Roehampton University, UK, and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, respectively. His academic interests focus on travel literature, translation and language studies, and his publications include American Travellers in Scandinavia, Icelandic Utopia in Victorian Travel Literature and Greek Dystopia in British Women Travellers' Discourse. He is currently working as an English teacher in the public sector.

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