Where the book ends and the album begins: Extra-illustrating the work of James MacPherson LeMoine1 in nineteenth-century Quebec

This article is a case study of photographs as extra-illustrations using as an example the third volume in the series of Maple Leaves books by Sir James MacPherson LeMoine (1825‐1912), published in 1865 under the subtitle Canadian History and Quebec Scenery, which was the first literary work in Canada to be commercially illustrated with photographs. Original albumen photographs made by photographer Jules-Isaïe Benoît dit Livernois (1830‐65) depicted many of the country villas described by the author in the section referred to as ‘Our Country Seats’. The readers of Maple Leaves turned this work into a complex and intimate record of a community by liberally augmenting the official photographs with individual prints selected independently for their copies. The surviving books collectively serve as a kind of regional album, preserving the tastes and aspirations of some of the 500 subscribers living in and around Quebec City in the mid-nineteenth century.

Songs My Mother Taught Me: New Light on James Macpherson’s Ossian

With the publication in 1762 of Fingal, the ancient epic poem James Macpherson claimed to have reconstructed from Erse sources, scholarly warfare broke out. The hitherto unassailable Irish bard Oisín was unexpectedly confronted with a rival Scottish claimant to the authorship of the Fionn Mac Cumhaill saga: Ossian. A consensus quickly emerged among outraged Irish antiquarians that Macpherson was a very clever fraudster who had ‘usurped the Fenian cycles of Gaelic Ireland’ for commercial gain. The controversy refused to die down, and half a century later there was still no final verdict on the alleged hoax. This article provides fresh perspectives on this controversy.

The Poetics of Nature in Ossian and Staël

France’s frame of reference shifted northward when James Macpherson went in search of the Scots national epic, returning with poems attributed to the third-century bard Ossian. Though denounced as a hoax, Macpherson’s reconstruction of a lost epic from surviving fragments has since been compared to scientific endeavors such as geology and cartography. Chapter 4 explores Macpherson’s use of similes interrelating the natural and the spiritual realms and the relationship between melancholy and memory in the epics before turning to their favorable French reception. Both Napoleon and Germaine de Staël embraced France’s northern heritage, hailing Ossian as the new Homer. Privileging northern melancholy over southern enthusiasm, Staël looked to the philosophical poetry of the north as the source of French spiritual regeneration. Ironically, anxieties about the epics’ authenticity led to the establishment of the Académie Celtique and the science of folklore.

History Writing and Agency in the Scottish Highlands: Postcolonial Thought, the Work of James Macpherson (1736–1796) and Researching the Region's Past with Local Communities

This article argues that postcolonial thought can be used as a tool for thinking about the present in the Scottish Highlands. Taking a case study of collaborative inquiry between local communities, High Life Highland (the body responsible for cultural services in the region) and the University of the Highlands and Islands into the work and legacies of the poet and historian James Macpherson (1736–1796), it examines the way in which the approach and ideas of postcolonialism can be used to better understand the past and critically engage communities in exploring their history. Building upon the work of James Hunter and his pioneering interpretation of Highland history through the work of Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, this article considers how postcolonialism can have intellectual solidarity with histories of the region, especially when we consider the role of the Highlands in processes of colonisation and imperialism. Through this comparative analysis, it demonstrates that using the past as a resource in the present enables communities to change the ways in which their history is presented and to imagine alternative futures.

Forging a nation: the spurious histories of Charles Bertram and James Macpherson

Chapter eight examines two texts which would have a dramatic impact on early modern attitudes towards ancient Scotland. The so-called De Situ Britanniae, ‘discovered’ by Englishman Charles Bertram in Copenhagen, purported to be a medieval manuscript copy of an ancient Roman source that radically rewrote the Roman history of Scotland. Widely disseminated and cited in antiquarian circles, it was only in the nineteenth century that the text was identified as an elaborate forgery. The 1760s saw the publication of poetry attributed to an ancient bard named Ossian and ‘translated’ from the Gaelic by James Macpherson. The verses told of the heroic deeds of Fingal and recounted tales of Caledonian battles against the Romans. Immediately denounced as a forgery by many, the poems would nevertheless become a worldwide sensation, reframing the ancient Caledonians as courtly and cultured figures whilst perfectly satisfying the growing taste for the Romantic and sublime.

Who Wrote That?

This book examines nine authorship controversies, providing an introduction to particular disputes and teaching students how to assess historical documents, archival materials, and apocryphal stories, as well as internet sources and news. The book does not argue in favor of one side over another but focuses on the principles of attribution used to make each case. While furthering the field of authorship studies, the book provides an essential resource for instructors at all levels in various subjects. It is ultimately about historical detective work. Using Moses, Analects, the Secret Gospel of Mark, Abelard and Heloise, the Compendium of Chronicles, Rashid al-Din, Shakespeare, Prince Andrei Kurbskii, James MacPherson, and Mikhail Sholokov, the book builds concrete examples that instructors can use to help students uncover the legitimacy of authorship and to spark the desire to turn over the hidden layers of history so necessary to the craft.

How Inauthentic was James Macpherson’s “Translation” of Ossian?

This chapter talks about the Scottish poet James Macpherson. It analyzes Macpherson's publication of the “Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland,” which he claimed was his own translation into English from old Gaelic manuscripts he discovered in the Scottish Highlands. It also looks into “Fingal,” an Ancient Epic Poem or cycle of poetry presumably sung by the legendary Scottish bard Ossian, which Macpherson also claimed was a translation from the Gaelic. The chapter examines the Ossian cycle that stimulated investigations and searches for ethnic folk literature, particularly for national epics throughout Europe and Russia that represented the mystical spirit of the nation. It looks into skeptics, such as Samuel Johnson, David Hume, and Horace Walpole who expressed doubt about the authenticity of Macpherson's translations.

Translations of Ossian, Thomas Moore and the Gothic by 19th Century European Radical Intellectuals: The Democratic Eastern Federation

<p>This article will show how translated works by European radical writers of <em>The Poems of Ossian</em> by the Scot James Macpherson and <em>Irish Melodies</em> and other works by the Irishman Thomas Moore, were disseminated. Moore prefaced <em>Irish Melodies</em> with “In Imitation of Ossian”. It will also demonstrate how Celtic literature, written in English, influenced the Gothic genre. The propagation of these works was also disseminated in order to implement democratic federalism, without monarchy; one example is the Democratic Eastern Federation, founded in Athens and Bucharest. To what extent did translations and imitations by Russian and Polish revolutionary intellectuals of Celtic literature and the Gothic influence Balkan revolutionary men of letters?</p>

Scotland and the North

The term ‘Romanticism’ takes on different associations when we consider its geographical extent. This chapter thinks about national configurations of space and time. Scotland was at once a modern producer of literature in the period and a way of imagining an ancient Romance past for modern culture. Scotland reinvents northern spaces, such as the Highlands or the Borders, as literary ones that signify this doubled temporality. Taking as key examples the poetry and novels of James Macpherson, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, and James Hogg, the chapter explores how the legal, economic, and political changes in Scotland’s history after the 1707 Act of Union are translated into centres of literary production that revived the ‘primitive’ past for contemporary consumption. This doubled temporality in turn gives rise to ironic doubling of voice or Gothic tropes in Scottish writing of the period.