From Gaelic to Romantic: Ossianic TranslationsFiona J. Stafford, Howard Gaskill The appearance of James Macpherson's Ossian in the 1760s caused an international sensation. The discovery of poetic fragments that seemed to have survived in the Highlands of Scotland for some 1500 years gripped the imagination of the reading public, who seized eagerly on the newly available texts for glimpses of a lost primitive world. That Macpherson's versions of the ancient heroic verse were more creative adaptations of the oral tradition than literal translations of a clearly identifiable original may have exercised contemporary antiquarians and contributed eventually to a decline in the popularity of Ossian. Yet for most early readers, as for generations of enthusiastic followers, what mattered was not the accuracy of the translation, but the excitement of encountering the primitive, and the mood engendered by the process of reading. The essays in this collection represent an attempt by late twentieth-century readers to chart the cultural currents that flowed into Macpherson's texts, and to examine their peculiar energy. Scholars distinguished in the fields of Gaelic, German, Irish, Scottish, French, English and American literature, language, history and cultural studies have each contributed to the exploration of Macpherson's achievement, with the aim of situating his notoriously elusive texts in a web of diverse contexts. Important new research into the traditional Gaelic sources is placed side by side with discussions of the more immediate political impetus of his poetry, while studies of the reception of Ossian in Scotland, Germany, France and England are part of the larger recognition of the cultural significance of Macpherson's work, and its importance to issues of fragmentation, liminality, colonialism, national identity, sensibility and gender. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 41
Page vi
... Modern Irish at the National University of Ireland , Galway . His fields of interest are Gaelic literature of the 17th and 18th centuries , Jacobitism , James Macpherson , and contemporary Gaelic literature . His publications include ...
... Modern Irish at the National University of Ireland , Galway . His fields of interest are Gaelic literature of the 17th and 18th centuries , Jacobitism , James Macpherson , and contemporary Gaelic literature . His publications include ...
Page xii
... modern linguists and historians , or to those working in the fields of Gaelic , Irish , Scottish , French , German , English or American literature . This volume records some of the aspects of Macpherson's work encountered by scholars ...
... modern linguists and historians , or to those working in the fields of Gaelic , Irish , Scottish , French , German , English or American literature . This volume records some of the aspects of Macpherson's work encountered by scholars ...
Page xiii
... modern was altogether more violent . The transformation of Gaelic tradition into a Romanticized image of a heroic past , to which Macpherson contributed so significantly , was not so much a liberation from antiquity as an absorption by ...
... modern was altogether more violent . The transformation of Gaelic tradition into a Romanticized image of a heroic past , to which Macpherson contributed so significantly , was not so much a liberation from antiquity as an absorption by ...
Page 11
... modern European culture makes them white- or gray - haired , bearded , and dressed in gowns . That is an almost automatic , instinctive simile , which attributes to the Celtic bard a prophetic status by dint of sartorial analogy . 11 ...
... modern European culture makes them white- or gray - haired , bearded , and dressed in gowns . That is an almost automatic , instinctive simile , which attributes to the Celtic bard a prophetic status by dint of sartorial analogy . 11 ...
Page 15
... modern Europe , and enriched all our poetry by it " , then this makes most sense to me at least in terms of the idea that Macpherson may have relayed an archaic notion of 17 The Woman in White , 430-31 . 18 Cf. also Donald Meek , " The ...
... modern Europe , and enriched all our poetry by it " , then this makes most sense to me at least in terms of the idea that Macpherson may have relayed an archaic notion of 17 The Woman in White , 430-31 . 18 Cf. also Donald Meek , " The ...
Contents
17 | |
MURRAY G H PITTOCK | 41 |
MÍCHEÁL MAC CRAITH | 59 |
THOMAS KEYMER | 79 |
F J LAMPORT | 97 |
LISA KOZLOWSKI | 119 |
SUSAN MANNING | 136 |
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Common terms and phrases
Absalom Agandecca ancient appears authenticity bard bardic battle beauty Blair Book Cairbar Celtic Celts century characters Charles O'Conor clan classical Conaire Mór context Cormac critics Cuchullin Dar-thula death defeat Dublin Edinburgh edition eighteenth eighteenth-century emotional English epic Faulkner feeling Fingal Fingalian Fiona Stafford Fragments Gaelic ballad georgic Goethe Goethe's harp heroes heroic Highland Homer Howard Gaskill Hugh Blair Ibid imagination Ireland Irish Jacobite James Macpherson John Keats king language Lenz Lenz's letter liminal literary literature London Mackenzie Mackenzie's Macpherson's Ossian memory Milton modern Morven myth narrative novel O'Carolan Oisín original Oscar past pastoral perhaps Pittock Poems of Ossian poet poetic poetry political published readers reading reference romance Scotland Scots Scottish Scottish Enlightenment seems sentiment Society Sterne story Sublime Savage Sueur suggests Swaran Temora thou tion Titans tradition translation Trenmor Tristram Shandy United Irishmen W.B. Yeats warrior Werther writing Yeats
Popular passages
Page 36 - In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and, which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty,...
Page 170 - Their glory wither'd : as when heaven's fire Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines, With singed top their stately growth, though bare, Stands on the blasted heath.
Page 5 - Lights of ships moved in the fairway — a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars. "And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth.
Page 148 - I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.
Page 179 - Scarce images of life, one here, one there, Lay vast and edgeways ; like a dismal cirque Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor, When the chill rain begins at shut of eve, In dull November, and their chancel vault, The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night.
Page 4 - Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead ana buried ; and that the dark, flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes, and mounds, and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low, leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers fro wing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was ip.
Page 96 - I am not yet so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas...
Page 148 - If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, through the whole course of our lives ; since self is supposed to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable.