This book presents a study of the rhetorical arts in early medieval Ireland, c. 431-800 CE. It consists of three case studies of Latinate and vernacular texts that are unique but also representative of the various strands of early Irish learning. The early Irish tradition is vast, consisting of texts composed in Latin, as well as the largest corpus of vernacular literature in the medieval west. The social and historical contexts from which this learned tradition emerged is also remarkably complex. Therefore, this study can only provide a snapshot of what is certainly a fruitful area for rhetorical study.

To begin, it is appropriate to dispel myths often associated with early Ireland. First, the early Irish did not identify as ‘Celtic’. In fact, Celtic does not designate an ethnicity, but a linguistic family. Though the early Irish spoke a Celtic language, they were culturally distinct from their Celtic speaking neighbours in modern-day England, Wales, and Scotland, and the origin of the Celtic language in Ireland is still debated, though it likely arrived in Ireland in the last few centuries BCE. Therefore, speaking of a ‘Celtic rhetoric’ is troubled from the start.

An idea often associated with Celtic identity is Ireland's isolation from the western Latin world in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Scholars who maintain this position argue that since the Romans never colonized Ireland, their ‘Celtic’ culture was preserved, under the protection of a ‘Celtic mist’, as it were. Therefore, the extant medieval manuscripts preserve something of the pre-Christian mythology and religion that would have been lost under Roman colonization. However, early Irish literature is preserved primarily in manuscripts that post-date the texts themselves, sometimes significantly. These manuscripts were composed and illuminated in Christian scriptoria, and the same is true of earlier exemplars from which texts were copied, so the extant evidence cannot be trusted to tell us much about any pre-Christian, ‘Celtic’ traditions. In addition to the Christian context of manuscript production, the Irish were certainly not isolated. Though Irish manuscripts and material culture are indeed distinctively Irish, from the beginning of the written record in Ireland in the fifth century CE the Irish maintained consistent contact with European neighbours, especially Britain and Spain, but also Gaul and Rome.