![]() ![]() The term “intertextuality” here denotes more than a collective description of the sharing, exchange and interdependence of words, figures, themes, story-plots and temporal-local settings between texts. This article firstly provides a general account of early Irish law, and secondly examines the discourses and techniques employed in early Irish law texts and law-books that creates intertextuality with other branches of senchas. ![]() How, and why, does the study of law seamlessly merge with those of other subjects, both in the selection of texts in manuscripts and in the law texts themselves? This article aims to demonstrate the organic connection between law texts and the medieval Irish learned tradition as a whole, called senchas 2 in Old Irish. The late medieval manuscripts that record law texts are no less a kaleidoscope of learning, with texts on many other subjects copied side by side with law tracts. The law texts refer freely to history, literature, medical theories and religious texts, sometimes even bearing unique testimony to texts that are otherwise lost. From a linguistic angle, the strata of compositions in law texts traverse a millennium from the seventh to the seventeenth century, and thus afford valuable witnesses to the development of the Irish language. 1 As regulations of behaviors they cover a dazzling array of topics in such detail, that historians are able to reconstruct many aspects of medieval Irish society from them. ![]() The richness of medieval Irish law texts can be appreciated from multiple perspectives. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |