The Development of Celtic Linguistics, 1850-1900

Following on from our 1999 publication Celtic Linguistics 1700-1850 , this set covers the period 1850-1900 which saw the foundation of the modern subject of Celtic linguistics.

Johann Kaspar Zeuss's Grammatica Celtica (1853) was the first text to make use of the advances in comparative philology in the early nineteenth century.

Zeuss applied this method to an extensive corpus of manuscript materials in the Celtic languages to formulate a detailed and comprehensive comparative grammar.

This mainstream of Celtic philology is elaborated by John Rhys in Lectures on Welsh Philology (1877), Marie Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville in Etudes grammaticales sur les langues celtiques (1881), and Whitley Stokes in Celtic Declension (1885).

Zeuss's work not only had an impact on linguistic studies but also inspired literary and ethnological research.

Matthew Arnold used Zeuss as the basis for his linguistic discussion of Celtic in the context of literary studies.

Arnold develops a theory of Celtic literature based on an ethno-linguistic definition of the Celtic peoples, including the English and their literature, in his work On the Study of Celtic Literature (1867). An ethnologic and philological approach is given a popular treatment by Thomas de Courcy Atkins in The Kelt or Gael: His Ethnography, Geography, and Philology (1892).

Despite these fundamental changes in the subject, earlier traditions of the historical study of the Celts, with an emphasis on language, are continued in John Jones Thomas's Britannia Antiquissima; or, A Key to the Philology of History (Sacred and Profane) (1860), notable for its publication in Australia.

Neo-druidic themes receive attention in John Williams's Gomer; or, A Brief Analysis of the Language and Knowledge of the Ancient Cymry (1854).

These texts indicate that understanding and acceptance of Zeuss's work did not occur instantaneously, but took place gradually as the new methods and approaches displaced these earlier modes of study.

This set covers a period of fundamental reformation in Celtic linguistics, and will be of interest to linguists, historians, and cultural theorists.