Full Description
This text explores the place, meaning and content of Celtic sport: the place, passion and meaning of rugby in Wales; shinty in Scotland; and football in Brittany. It provides for an explanation of the links betweenn civic and ethnic nationalism in Irish sport, the role of the Gaelic Athletic Association in both Ireland and Scotland, and a critical evaluation of the part played by sport in political nationalism in France. The author seeks to explain why so many of the peripheral borderlands of Europe, struggling for elements of autonomy, tend to be pasionate about national and regional forms of sport.
Contents
Sport in the making of Celtic cultures; civic and ethnic nationalism in the Celtic vision of Irish sport; sport and Scottish Gaeldom in Argyllshire 1790-1900; Brittany, between Ireland, Scotland and France; "the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game" - sport, literature and Welsh identity; Stade Rennais - the standard bearer of Breton identity; the place of shinty in the celebration of New Year; the Gaelic Athletic Association and organized sport in Ireland; sporting assimilation and cultural confusion in Brittany; more than a game - physical culture, identity and citizenship in Wales; hurling an old sport in a new world; heritage, culture and identity - the Gaelic Athletic Association in Scotland.
