Literacy and Orality: Debates and Approaches

It has been stressed throughout this study that early Irish literacy functioned within a secondary-oral environment, an environment in which the oral and written were in continual interaction. At one end was the monastic literatus whose writings were part of the intellectual world of Christianity and who relied on a whole infrastructure of literacy based on ecclesiastical institutions, books and pedagogy. At the other were more transient contributors to this culture, individuals such as the baird and the lower ranked among filid. These, despite their limited literate skills, still partook of the accepted social realities articulated by the literate elite. It is almost a truism to say that the interrelationships between these different groups and with the aristocracy was complex. However, they have proved a thorny historiographical issue, especially in respect to their impact on the Irish narrative tradition of scéla. The debates about the composition, function and transmission of the vernacular tales have a direct bearing on how their social contexts, in terms of authorship and audience, are interpreted. Moreover, they are crucial to our understanding of the role of literacy within early Irish society and the ramification of that role for the creation and consolidation of senses of elite communal identities.