Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
The west has long gripped the imagination. In Atlantic Isles, Gareth Roddy examines the cultural and political prominence of the ‘westward gaze’, which flourished in late-nineteenth century Britain and Ireland. From Cornish cliffs and Welsh mountains to Hebridean islands and the Connemara highlands, the west was an imagined geography that transcended the national territories of these isles. In the west, geologists uncovered ancient layers of rock, ethnologists described older racial ‘types’, philologists looked for the survival of Celtic languages, and antiquarians and archaeologists marvelled at megalithic monuments at the Atlantic coastline.
The book draws on wide-ranging contemporary sources, including works of geology, philology, ethnology, history, geography, archaeology, folklore, literature, sociology and an extensive collection of travel writing that popularised western landscapes among readers and tourists who explored the increasingly accessible west by road, rail, and steamer. Atlantic Isles reveals that western landscapes were especially powerful spaces of modern enchantment, where stories of sunken lands and mythical islands produced a sense of mystery and wonder in a supposedly disenchanted world. The significance of western landscapes for national identities is well known, but this book demonstrates that the west was also central to debates about Britishness and to the bold attempt to construct a narrative of multinational union that claimed deep historical roots at a time when the subject of Home Rule periodically dominated political debate.
The people of the British Isles have long been fascinated by the idea of the west. *Atlantic Isles skilfully explores the roots of this fascination. It shows how the west came to be seen as an important source of spiritual nourishment and identity amidst the change and dislocation of modernity. Britishness, in Roddy’s compelling account, emerges as more complex, more variously constituted and more Atlantic in its orientation than is often assumed.*
—Paul Readman, Professor of Modern British History, King's College London, UK and Co-editor, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.
Both the methodology and the structure of the book are especially impressive. The latter makes the book readily accessible both to specialized and non-specialized readerships. The author provides a detailed introductory chapter, which displays their expert grasp of the field, as it dialogues with and explores historical and contemporary sources. Furthermore, the author is not only a proven historical scholar, but the text also evinces a mastery of style. The raw historical materials are corralled into arguments that are eloquently expressed. This is an outstanding piece of historical scholarship and cultural history. The author expertly handles a diversity of contexts and adding significantly to Irish Studies by bringing these materials into contact with those of the broader British Isles. Indeed, the book might well be seen as a significant intervention in the Irish Environmental Humanities, specifically, the blue humanities.
—Judging panel from the British Association for Irish Studies Book Prize
- Introduction
- Part I Infrastructure
- 1 Infrastructure and tourism in the west
- Part II Enchantment
- 2 The westward gaze – elusive islands
- 3 The westward gaze – sunken lands
- Part III Performance
- 4 Performing travel
- 5 Looking back – modernity and the west
- Part IV Identity
- 6 Layers of Britishness
- 7 Varieties of Britishness
- Conclusion: Atlantic Isles