ABSTRACT
Insular Latin prose - both Anglo-Saxon and Irish - often seems to represent a battleground between two opposing stylistic impulses: one towards a plain style, which may be seen as classicising, or as Augustinian sermo humilis, 1 the other towards exuberant ornamentation of one kind or another. 2 At the head of the latter tradition stands the massively influential figure of the sixth-century Briton Gildas, whose highly ornate prose may be linked stylistically with the discourse of Gaulish contemporaries such as Sidonius Apollinaris.l In the context of the British Isles, however, ornamented styles in literature are a parallel case to styles of ornament such as interlace in Insular art. A number of schools can be readily distinguished, with a certain amount of interconnection between them, while the establishment of appropriate taxonomies materially helps to bring the development of cultures over time into focus.
