On the early development of written narrative prose in Irish and Welsh

Abstract

In his survey of the earliest evidence for the written text in the medieval Celtic literatures the author adverts to recent studies suggesting that there was a degree of Latin literacy in Ireland even in pre-Christian times and that this may have facilitated the eventual introduction of writing in the vernacular. He also reviews those studies which have sought, on the basis of the extant texts of the earliest surviving literature, to establish when the vernaculars began to be written for literary purposes. In both Ireland and Wales traditional verse appears to have been recorded considerably earlier than narrative prose, the chronology disparity being much greater in Wales. Indeed recent research tends to see the written tradition of the earliest Welsh verse, the Hengerdd, as beginning much earlier than was hitherto supposed. He touches upon the relationship of didactic and narrative prose on the one hand and of oral and written prose on the other, emphasizing the importance of closer stylistic and syntactic analysis for determining the role of function and medium in shaping medieval Irish and Welsh prose narrative.