Ossian

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
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). See also Osian
Ossian's dream, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1813
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. He is based on Oisín, son of Finn or Fionn mac Cumhaill, a character from Irish mythology. The furore over the "authenticity" of the poems continued into the 20th century.

Contents

[edit] The poems

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, written by Ossian. The name Fingal or Fionnghall means "white stranger".[1] 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 (even Napoleon became a great fan) 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.

Ossian, by François Pascal Simon Gérard
Ossian, by François Pascal Simon Gérard

The poems also exerted an influence on the burgeoning of Romantic music, and Franz Schubert in particular composed Lieder setting many of Ossian's poems.

[edit] Authenticity debate

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 that their heritage was being appropriated. However, 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. Scottish author, Hugh Blair's 1763 A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian upheld the work's authenticity against Johnson's scathing criticism and from 1765 was included in every edition of Ossian to lend the work credibility.

Thomson (1952) finds 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.

[edit] Editions

  • 1996: The Poems of Ossian and Related Works, ed. Howard Gaskill, with an Introduction by Fiona Stafford (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press).

[edit] References

  • George F. Black, Macpherson's Ossian and the Ossianic Controversy, New York, (1926).
  • Derick Thomson, The Gaelic Sources of Macpherson's "Ossian" (1952).
  • Patrick MacGregor, M.A., The Genuine Remains of Ossian, Literally Translated, Highland Society of London, (1841)
  1. ^ Behind the Name: View Name: Fingal

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossian"
Personal tools