Ossian

Encyclopedia : O : OS : OSS : Ossian

This article is about the cycle of poems by James Macpherson and their main character. For the character from Irish mythology, see Oisín. For other uses of the name Ossian, see Ossian (disambiguation).

Ossian's dream, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1813

Ossian is the narrator, and supposed author, of a cycle of poems which the Scottish poet James Macpherson claimed to have translated from ancient sources in the Scots Gaelic. The furore over the "authenticity" of the poems has continued to the present. Ossian is based on Oisín, son of Fionn mac Cumhail, a character from Irish mythology.

In 1760 Macpherson published the English-language text Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and later that year obtained further manuscripts. In 1761 he claimed to have found an epic on the subject of the hero Fingal (Macpherson's version of Fionn) written by Ossian. He published translations of it during the next few years, culminating in a collected edition; The Works of Ossian, in 1765. The most famous of these poems was Fingal written in 1762. The poems achieved international success and were proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of the Classical writers such as Homer. Many writers were influenced by the works, including the young Walter Scott and the German writer J.W. von Goethe, whose own German translation of a portion of Macpherson's work figures prominently in a climactic scene of The Sorrows of Young Werther. Goethe's associate Johann Gottfried Herder wrote an essay titled Extract from a correspondence about Ossian and the Songs of Ancient Peoples in the early days of the Sturm und Drang movement.

There were immediate disputes about Macpherson's claims, for literary and political reasons. Macpherson promoted a Scottish origin for the material, and was hotly opposed by Irish historians who felt with some justification that their heritage was being appropriated. (In fact, both Scotland and Ireland shared a common Gaelic culture during the period in which the poems are set and some Fenian literature common in both countries was composed in Scotland.)

The controversy raged on into the early years of the 19th century, with disputes as to whether the poems were based on Irish sources, on sources in English, on Gaelic fragments woven into his own composition as Samuel Johnson concluded, or largely on Scots Gaelic oral traditions and manuscripts as Macpherson claimed. Modern scholars have demonstrated that Macpherson had indeed collected Scottish Gaelic Ossianic ballads, but had adapted them to contemporary sensibilities by altering the original characters and ideas and had introduced a great deal of his own (see Derick Thomson's The Gaelic Sources of Macpherson's "Ossian", 1952). Many feel that the question of authenticity should not overshadow the artistic merit and cultural significance of the poems.

External links

[Selected Bibliography: James Macpherson and Ossian] Excellent online bibliography; compiled by designated experts in the field; covering the most important scholarly monographs and articles on Ossian and Macpherson up to March 2004.
[Literary Encyclopedia: Ossian]
[Significant Scots - James MacPherson]
[Popular Tales of the West Highlands by J. F. Campbell Volume IV (1890)]
[A Vision of Britain Through Time] James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, discussion in entries for 22 and 23 September 1773.
[Calum Colvin: "Ossian: Fragments of Ancient Poetry"] Reproduction of the cycle of paintings "Ossian: Fragments of Ancient Poetry" (2002) by one of Scotland's most renowned contemporary artist, Calum Colvin. (under category "exhibitions")

Ossian

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