MacPherson sounds like a fascinating figure, even if many scholars doubt the veracity of his claims of coming across Ossianic poetry and translating it from the original Gaelic. He was undoubtably a very talented author. I can understand why people would be upset by his dishonesty, but it sounds like he cared a lot about Celtic culture, and around the time he was writing., there was very little scholarship on the subject, so I can at least laud him for trying to spread awareness of it.
Your deep-dives of Celtic history and literature and always so fascinating!
His contemporary critics, I've noticed, sometimes devolve into Redditor levels of lambasting even when their own studies have nothing to do with Celtic language or history. One example I can think of is Samuel Johnson (whose likeness has ironically been used for a meme in recent years; it's an oil painting of a fat old man looking confusedly at a book) who seemed to have a personal vendetta against Macpherson, while an Irish critic, Charles O'Connor was able to formulate more levelheaded comments against the works. O'Connor would later follow up by going to where Macpherson had travelled and interviewing some of the people he had spoken with.
I feel like if he had admitted he merely took inspiration from the old stories it would've gone a lot better for him in terms of literary discourse, but I also understand his want for trying to show that Scotland did indeed have an identity worth preserving.
Years ago John Dolan aka The War Nerd shared a fascinating paper from his time in academia where he compared James Macpherson to both John Smith (of the Mormons) and literary forger Thomas Chatterton. I believe he argued that Smith and MacPherson were closer to each other than either was to Chatterton. I can't find the actual paper in my files right now, but I did come across this note I must've made at the time: "Also a really interesting discussion about the ways people actively suspend their disbelief, and the needs of the Americans and the Scots to find a better history for themselves (Dolan argues the English were secure enough not to need this, and thus Chatterton was the only failure among these three examples)."
It's really interesting to see how devastating English imperialism was on national identities, ironically there have been Unionists who advocate for Gaelic language rights but given how insular and conservative the language is it doesn't seem like it would fare too well under the umbrella of a globalist regime.
MacPherson sounds like a fascinating figure, even if many scholars doubt the veracity of his claims of coming across Ossianic poetry and translating it from the original Gaelic. He was undoubtably a very talented author. I can understand why people would be upset by his dishonesty, but it sounds like he cared a lot about Celtic culture, and around the time he was writing., there was very little scholarship on the subject, so I can at least laud him for trying to spread awareness of it.
Your deep-dives of Celtic history and literature and always so fascinating!
His contemporary critics, I've noticed, sometimes devolve into Redditor levels of lambasting even when their own studies have nothing to do with Celtic language or history. One example I can think of is Samuel Johnson (whose likeness has ironically been used for a meme in recent years; it's an oil painting of a fat old man looking confusedly at a book) who seemed to have a personal vendetta against Macpherson, while an Irish critic, Charles O'Connor was able to formulate more levelheaded comments against the works. O'Connor would later follow up by going to where Macpherson had travelled and interviewing some of the people he had spoken with.
I feel like if he had admitted he merely took inspiration from the old stories it would've gone a lot better for him in terms of literary discourse, but I also understand his want for trying to show that Scotland did indeed have an identity worth preserving.
Academia and Redditors 🤮
Years ago John Dolan aka The War Nerd shared a fascinating paper from his time in academia where he compared James Macpherson to both John Smith (of the Mormons) and literary forger Thomas Chatterton. I believe he argued that Smith and MacPherson were closer to each other than either was to Chatterton. I can't find the actual paper in my files right now, but I did come across this note I must've made at the time: "Also a really interesting discussion about the ways people actively suspend their disbelief, and the needs of the Americans and the Scots to find a better history for themselves (Dolan argues the English were secure enough not to need this, and thus Chatterton was the only failure among these three examples)."
It's really interesting to see how devastating English imperialism was on national identities, ironically there have been Unionists who advocate for Gaelic language rights but given how insular and conservative the language is it doesn't seem like it would fare too well under the umbrella of a globalist regime.
Setting aside the politics, it’s just good poetry that one should be able to enjoy without reservation. Haters gotta hate…