Poetic Law and the Medieval Irish Linguist: Contextualizing the Vices and Virtues of Verse Composition in Auraicept na nÉces

Abstract

Doctrine concerning the faults and correctives of poetic composition in the medieval Irish grammatical treatise Auraicept na nÉces, 'The Scholars' Primer', illuminates not only our understanding of the Auraicept 's complex textual transmission, but also aspects of the relationship between linguistic and legal learning in early Ireland. This contribution examines parallels between the Auraicept 's stylistic teaching and similar material found in other texts from the medieval Irish literary canon, and considers the significance of this doctrine in relation to the literary portrayal of satire as a potential regulatory force in society. Against this background, it compares the arrangement of material pertaining to stylistic devices in two distinct manuscript copies of the Auraicept that have previously been identified as belonging to separate recensions. It is argued that such a preliminary investigation may serve as a useful diagnostic to highlight some of the issues involved in a larger-scale study of the Auraicept 's textual transmission.