Ebook: Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature

First Published 1990. Reprinted 1991.

An integrated approach to medieval Ireland's vast extant literature has long been hampered by a tendency to partition it into secular and ecclesiastical genres, the former written mostly in Old or Middle Irish and the latter in Latin or the vernacular. Medievalists dealing with obviously clerical sources, especially the Hiberno-Latin ones most readily accessible to them, have increasingly come to recognise the wide and up-to-date reading, erudite sophistication, and reasonably typical medieval western outlook, scriptural and patristic orientation behind them. This book examines various aspects of a thorough intermingling of native with biblical and other imported elements in the monastic milieu responsible for early medieval Ireland’s extensive literary output in Latin and the vernacular. It is argued that this was informed by a coherent overall framework firmly rooted, with appropriate adaptations, in a Christian worldview.