For a brilliant introduction to Macpherson and the “Ossian” poems, we suggest our International Companion, ed. Dafydd Moore – available in print or online via Project MUSE

9/9

Cover 🖼️: Karoli, The woes of Ossian

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/companions/ic4/

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #romanticism #fantasy #Ossian #JamesMacpherson #Gaelic #Gaidhlig

Ossian, the European National Epic
Gauti Kristmannsson

“The number of translations & imitations […] underlines the huge creative impulse of the [Ossian] poems, which can be seen as a major paradigm shift in the outlook of what is called high culture literature.”

8/9

https://www.ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/models-and-stereotypes/anglophilia/gauti-kristmannsson-ossian-the-european-national-epic-1760-1810

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #romanticism #fantasy #Ossian #JamesMacpherson #Gaelic #Gaidhlig

“He’s usually scorned by English-language readers as a charlatan. But he knew Gaelic, he travelled in the Highlands & he talked to Gaelic speakers. […] All works of art are made by artifice.”

Prof Alan Riach on James Macpherson’s “Ossian”

7/9

https://www.thenational.scot/news/18453868.unlocking-james-macphersons-tales-ossian/

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #romanticism #fantasy #Ossian #JamesMacpherson #Gaelic #Gaidhlig

Prof Derick Thomson conducted extensive research into the Gaelic sources of Macpherson’s poetry. This dimension is still often overlooked by scholars & many seem to be entirely unaware of it. Dr Petra Johana Poncarová explores Thomson’s work in this field

6/9

https://anglica-journal.com/article/144001/en

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #romanticism #fantasy #Ossian #JamesMacpherson #Gaelic #Gaidhlig

Another likely reason why he was (& still is) sneered at was his popularity & success… Undoubtedly he padded his texts & added his own inventions—as writers do. Real or fake, whole swathes of the modern literary world still lie in his shadow

5/9

🖼️: Runciman, The Death of Oscar

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #romanticism #fantasy #Ossian #JamesMacpherson #Gaelic #Gaidhlig

Macpherson did not find his texts in “ancient manuscripts” – though there are some, e.g. The Red Book of Clanranald & the Book of the Dean of Lismore. But 18th-century attitudes dismissed the oral tradition which formed the bedrock of the poems

4/9

🖼️: Scheffer, La Mort de Malvina

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #romanticism #fantasy #Ossian #JamesMacpherson #Gaelic #Gaidhlig

Today, Macpherson is often called a “faker” & “forger”. But much of the hostility towards him is because, shortly after the Jacobite rebellions, he staked a claim for the existence of a Gaelic high culture

3/9

🖼️: Girodet, Ossian Receiving the Ghosts of Fallen French Heroes

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #romanticism #fantasy #Ossian #JamesMacpherson #Gaelic #Gaidhlig

@litstudies

Ossian fans included Goethe, Diderot, Jefferson, Bonaparte, Mendelssohn… Ossian-inspired art was created across Europe. Children were given Ossianic names such as Oscar & Fiona (will children still get named “Daenerys” in 250 years?)

2/9

🖼️: Abildgaard, Ossian Singing

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #romanticism #fantasy #Ossian #JamesMacpherson #Gaelic #Gaidhlig