Textual Structure, Dialogue and the Layout of the Manuscripts of Acallam na Senórach

In the medieval Irish frame narrative Acallam na Senórach ‘The Colloquy of the Ancients’, ancient Irish warriors Caílte and Oisín meet Saint Patrick and take him on a tour of Ireland, telling him hundreds of stories about the late Finn mac Cumaill. The nature of the text has led scholars to see Acallam na Senórach as episodic; yet, no research has been done into the manuscript evidence relating to how scribes and medieval readers may have conceived of the narrative as containing different parts, such as how the text is displayed on the page, which initials are coloured or indented in the margins and marginalia. This article draws on the concepts of ‘grammar of legibility’ (Parkes 1992: 23) and ‘lisibilité du texte’ ‘legibility of the text’ (Bergeron & Ornato 1990: 151–152) to address this desideratum. This study focusses on the five manuscripts (s. xv–xvii) in which Acallam na Senórach survives, and demonstrates that layout, colours, litterae notabiliores and paragraphs are used as a way to mark dialogue and the textual structure of the narrative.