Galícia, nai e señora? Celtismo e masculinização do nacionalismo galego em Na noite estrelecida

Abstract

The celtic inheritance speech worked as a fomentation to the articulation and the projections 20th century nationalist speeches in Ireland as well in Galicia. The historical review in the book Lebhar Gabhála Éireann, the celtic race and the common past made the celtic idea a basic resource for Ireland and Galicia to legitimize their yearnings for the independence of the British and Spanish dominions, respectively. However, the rhetoric of celtism was deteriorated from the discourse of the colonial stereotype that feminized the colonies and masculinized the metropolis. The feminization of the Irish and Galician lands served as an argument to endorse the exacerbated melancholic sentimentalism to the detriment of reason, which resulted in an inability to self-govern because of its inferiority to the so-called masculine lands that subjugated them. Ramon Cabanillas, remarkable author of the nationalist movement that sought the revaluation of culture, language and literature, addressed issues of gender conflict in the poem Na noite estrelecida. Cabanillas discarded the female figures, already cursed by imperialist discourse, and sought in the virility of Celtic heroes, as King Arthur and Galahaz, a new strategy to subvert this pejorative stereotype and make Galicia a land of men