Insular Art - Use of The Term

Use of The Term

The term was derived from its use for Insular script, first cited by the OED in 1908, and is also used for the group of Insular Celtic languages by linguists. Initially used mainly to describe the style of decoration of illuminated manuscripts, which are certainly the most numerous type of major surviving objects using the style, it is now used more widely across all the arts. It has the advantage of recognising the unity of styles across the British Isles while avoiding the use of that term, sensitive in modern Ireland, and also circumventing arguments about the origins of the style, and the place of creation of specific works, which were often fierce in the 20th century. Some sources distinguish between a "wider period between the 5th and 11th centuries, from the departure of the Romans to the beginnings of the Romanesque style" and a "more specific phase from the 6th to 9th centuries, between the conversion to Christianity and the Viking settlements". C. R. Dodwell, on the other hand, says that in Ireland "the Insular style continued almost unchallenged until the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1170; indeed examples of it occur even as late as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries".