This study explores the rhetorical devices used by Irish bardic poets to create poetry of literary worth and abiding interest. A number of poems selected for this study are read with emphasis on the rhetorical characteristics they shared with work of similar status in other parts of Europe in the High Middle Ages.



Irish bardic poetry is an expression of medieval European high literary cultures. Its themes, tropes and treatments are, along with being an expression of indigenous Irish literary culture, reflexes of the shared classical culture of the Europe of the High Middle...