Kieffer, Alexandra2024-05-212024-05-212024-052024-04-19May 2024Webb, Emma. Celts, Saxons, and Milesians: Orientalized Nationalism in Young Irelander Ballads. (2024). Masters thesis, Rice University. https://hdl.handle.net/1911/116147https://hdl.handle.net/1911/116147In resistance to the British Empire, the nineteenth-century political group known as Young Ireland promoted a bold Irish nationalism in their journal, The Nation, and ballad collection, The Spirit of the Nation. These ballads, intended to rejuvenate Irish musical culture, involved long-standing Orientalist pseudo-histories that traced Irish ancestry to eastern civilizations, namely the Phoenicians and Milesians. In opposition to British utilitarianism and white-on-white racism, these imagined identities helped articulate Young Ireland’s racial politics, as they interpolated a novel kind of nationalism into Irish traditional music. However, an examination of Young Ireland’s musical practices—their approach to setting traditional airs using recycled Jacobite poetic genres—reveals a friction in racial politics involving ideas of Orientalism, uplift, and Anglicization. These conclusions expand the current understandings of Orientalism in Irish music and lead to a deeper understanding of the complexities of Orientalism in Irish culture and history.application/pdfengCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.IrelandIrish musicfolknationalismOrientalismYoung Irelandorigin mythologyaislingThe NationSpirit of the NationMilesianColonialismIrish historyThesis2024-05-21