“Tales of the Times of Old”: Britons in the Poems of Ossian
This paper focuses on Anglo-Scottish relations in the eighteenth century, and the expression they find in the Poems of Ossian (1773) by James Macpherson. Ambivalent feelings about the 1707 Act of Union, Scotophobia, Jacobite Risings, Highland Clearances, and the Scottish Renaissance form the backgro...
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| Argitaratua izan da: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/etudesecossaises, |
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| Formatua: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Hizkuntza: | Anglais |
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Études écossaises
2015
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| Sarrera elektronikoa: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Gaia: | This paper focuses on Anglo-Scottish relations in the eighteenth century, and the expression they find in the Poems of Ossian (1773) by James Macpherson. Ambivalent feelings about the 1707 Act of Union, Scotophobia, Jacobite Risings, Highland Clearances, and the Scottish Renaissance form the background, and partially condition the creation of this most famous literary fraud. Macpherson depicts his “English” as “Britons”: this paper analyses four poems in which they appear (“Carthon”, “Lathmon”, “Oithona”, “Calthon and Colmal”). Research proves that the author constructs his tales and his characters in an original way. He manages to express both pro- and anti-Unionist sentiment, and perfectly captures the ambiguity of the nascent “Britishness”. |
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