Kirjahaku

This comprehensive history of the Celts from origins to the present draws on archaeological, historical, literary, and linguistic evidence. It is divided into three parts. Part one covers the continental Celts in prehistory and antiquity, complete with accounts of the Celts in Germany, Italy, Iberia, and Asia Minor. The second part follows the Celts from the departure of the Romans to the late Middle Ages, including the migrations to and settlements in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Brittany. Discussions of the Celtic kingdoms and the rise and fall of Celtic Christianity are also given. The final part brings the history of the Celts up to the present, covering the assimilation of the Celts within the national cultures of Great Britain, France, and Ireland. Included in this consideration are the suppression of Gaelic, the declines, revivals, and survivals of languages and literatures, and the histories of Celtic culture.

This comprehensive history of the Celts from origins to the present draws on archaeological, historical, literary, and linguistic evidence. It is divided into three parts. Part one covers the continental Celts in prehistory and antiquity, complete with accounts of the Celts in Germany, Italy, Iberia, and Asia Minor. The second part follows the Celts from the departure of the Romans to the late Middle Ages, including the migrations to and settlements in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Brittany. Discussions of the Celtic kingdoms and the rise and fall of Celtic Christianity are also given. The final part brings the history of the Celts up to the present, covering the assimilation of the Celts within the national cultures of Great Britain, France, and Ireland. Included in this consideration are the suppression of Gaelic, the declines, revivals, and survivals of languages and literatures, and the histories of Celtic culture.

The definitive reference work on this topic. `[The author takes] the Celtic world to include both the European continent and the more recent settlements in the British Isles. The entries, admirably broad in scope, conceive religion and culture as including not only the usual gods and myths but shamanic practices and totems. Maier also provides entries for important scholars of Celtic culture.' CHOICE

The European encounter with Eastern languages, literatures and civilizations is now the subject of intense academic debate: more than at any time since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism. Bernhard Maier here examines the different facets of Victorian Orientalism, and explores the wider questions of identity and cultural imperialism relating to Britain in the 19th century. Specifying individual regions of encounter, Maier describes the very different responses which Palestine, Egypt, India, China and Japan evoked in the Victorian mind, and sheds light on the attitudes prevalent among administrators and military men, missionaries, philologists and historians, travellers, writers and artists towards the Orient. Exploring the wealth of secondary literature relating to Orientalism, from scholarly monographs and archival material to original fiction, prose and poetry, Maier illuminates a crucial stage in the history of cultural encounters between Europe and the East.

William Robertson Smith (1846-1894) was successively the embattled champion of the emergent "higher criticism" as applied to the Old Testament, chief editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Professor of Arabic at Cambridge University. Today he is acknowledged to have been a pioneering figure in both social anthropology and the study of comparative religion, deeply influencing the thinking of J. G. Frazer, Emile Durkheim and Sigmund Freud. The first full-length biography of Robertson Smith to be published for almost a hundred years, this text makes use of hitherto unknown material preserved by the Smith family and draws upon the extensive range of correspondence between Smith and such scholars as Albrecht Ritschl, Paul de Lagarde, Julius Wellhausen, Abraham Kuenen and Theodor Nöldeke. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the biography locates and defines the place of this remarkable polymath within the context of Free Church Calvinism, the Scottish Enlightenment and 19th century German Protestant theology. It highlights Smith's interest in physics and philosophy, his friendship with contemporary artists, his Oriental travels, and his involvement in the social life of Edinburgh and Aberdeen. In recent years, the image of Smith as a comparative religionist has come to dominate all other perspectives and indeed tends now to overshadow his fame as an Old Testament scholar. This book seeks to redress the balance, aiming to discover the theological drive behind Smith's manifold activities.

Die keltischen Druiden lassen sich nicht auf freundliche Mistelschneider im Stile eines Miraculix reduzieren. Ihre Bedeutung im Rahmen oft blutiger Rituale, düsterer Kulte, aber auch in Rechtsprechung und Politik reichten weit darüber hinaus. Nicht weniger interessant ist ihr Nachleben in der Vorstellungswelt vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, in Forschung und Esoterik. Dieser Band bietet eine anregende und differenzierte Einführung in Wesen und Geschichte der Druiden. 978346562662

Bis auf den heutigen Tag erscheinen die Germanen als geheimnisumwittertes Volk der Frühgeschichte. Schriftliches haben sie - abgesehen von wenigen, schwer deutbaren Runenzeichen - nicht hinterlassen. Doch finden sich manche Zeugnisse in den Quellen der klassischen Antike, nicht zuletzt auch in der Skalden-Dichtung, den Werken altnordischer Sänger. Anhand dieser Texte und bestimmter archäologischer Funde führt Bernhard Maier in einen besonders faszinierenden Bereich der Welt der Germanen ein - ihre Religion. Er geht einer Vielzahl von Fragen nach, die den Götterhimmel der Germanen ebenso betreffen wie ihre Vorstellungen über die Entstehung und das künftige Ende der Welt, ihre Ritual- und Kultpraxis, ihren Totenbrauch und Jenseitsglauben. Auf diese Weise läßt er ihre Mythen, ihre Vorstellungen von Göttern und Helden für den heutigen Leser wieder lebendig werden. Zugleich entlarvt er den ideologischen Mißbrauch, der mit dem kulturellen Erbe der Germanen getrieben wurde - ja in manchen Kreisen immer noch getrieben wird. Ebenso erhellt er die Fragwürdigkeit esoterischer und neuheidnischer Strömungen, in denen eine Pseudoreligion mit allerlei germanischen Versatzstücken garniert wird. Ein informatives und spannendes, aber auch kritisches Buch über die Religion der Germanen.