Page "Irish mythology" Paragraph 5

It was once unquestioned that medieval Irish literature preserved truly ancient traditions in a form virtually unchanged through centuries of oral tradition back to the ancient Celts of Europe.

Kenneth Jackson famously described the Ulster Cycle as a " window on the Iron Age ", and Garret Olmsted has attempted to draw parallels between Táin Bó Cuailnge, the Ulster Cycle epic, and the iconography of the Gundestrup Cauldron.

However, this " nativist " position has been challenged by " revisionist " scholars who believe that much of it was created in Christian times in deliberate imitation of the epics of classical literature that came with Latin learning.

The revisionists would indicate passages apparently influenced by the Iliad in Táin Bó Cuailnge, and the existence of Togail Troí, an Irish adaptation of Dares Phrygius ' De excidio Troiae historia, found in the Book of Leinster, and note that the material culture of the stories is generally closer to the time of the stories ' composition than to the distant past.

A consensus has emerged which encourages the critical reading of the material.