Celtic Presence: Studies in Celtic Languages and Literatures: Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Cornish

This book's central theme, as the author notes in the preface, is "dimensions of Celtic linguistic presence" as manifested in diverse sociolinguistic contexts. However, the concept of "linguistic presence" gives no coherence to this group of disjointed essays. In a traditional Celtic studies approach, the book covers both linguistic and literature topics. The linguistic topics include Celtic lexical influence on local English varieties in present-day Ireland and Cornwall and the Cornish language revival in Cornwall, while the literature topics covered include contemporary Scottish Gaelic poetry in Scotland, and a purported Celtic tendency in Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh-language poetry and prose to highlight the importance of place and placenames. Two sociolinguistic chapters make important points about how regional English variants have been overlooked in the assessment of Celtic linguistic influence on English, and many of the chapters provide primers on their respective topics, based on secondary sources. However, the literature chapters—and the book overall—uncritically conflate linguistic and cultural definitions of "Celtic," a problem of ongoing concern in Celtic studies (Nagy 2002:7).