Ossian, the ‘Homer of the North’, the greatest literary hoax (2016)
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Ossian, the ‘Homer of the North’, the greatest literary hoax (2016)
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Re: Ossian, the ‘Homer of the North’, the greatest literary hoax (2016)
#2[deleted]
Re: Ossian, the ‘Homer of the North’, the greatest literary hoax (2016)
#3Read it in grad school (for an English PhD). And honestly, that's the only context in which I'd recommend doing so. It's a dreary slog of a book; we were reading it more for its historical importance than for any particular literary quality.
But I don't recall anyone at the time (mid 90s) doubting that the book was a forgery -- a somewhat inept mish-mash of Celtic literary figures and motifs. The interesting part was that people went absolutely wild for it. To the point that one can now speak of "Ossianism" as a significant literary movement.
Re: Ossian, the ‘Homer of the North’, the greatest literary hoax (2016)
#4>Now scientists have used mathematical techniques to compare patterns in the “social networks” of characters in Ossian with those in two key Irish stories – and discovered they are almost a perfect match, virtually ending any remaining debate.
Seems like a flimsy argument, irrespective of the other evidence.
Re: Ossian, the ‘Homer of the North’, the greatest literary hoax (2016)
#5>Now scientists have used mathematical techniques to compare patterns in the “social networks” of characters in Ossian with those in two key Irish stories – and discovered they are almost a perfect match, virtually ending any remaining debate. Seems like a flimsy argument, irrespective of the other evidence.
[deleted]
Re: Ossian, the ‘Homer of the North’, the greatest literary hoax (2016)
#6Usually the "I found and translated this old work" gimmick is presented within the text, not outside it.
That aside, digital humanities work can be interesting, but I found a preprint of the actual paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.00142.pdf) and their conclusion seems to be "Ossian is closer to these Irish works than it is to Homer".
I'm not going to bother digging into their methods to see if they're plausible, but it's not clear to me why you'd expect anything else, or be able to conclude much of anything from that. If Ossian were real, then you'd expect later sources like "Acallam na Senórach" to either have been inspired by it or similar sources; if Ossian were not real then you'd expect it to have been inspired by "Acallam na Senórach" or similar sources.
That is, they've found correlation, but from all hitherto existing analyses we already know there's substantial correlation, and what we care about is causality.
Re: Ossian, the ‘Homer of the North’, the greatest literary hoax (2016)
#7From wikipedia:
> Johnson also dismissed the poems' quality. Upon being asked, "But Doctor Johnson, do you really believe that any man today could write such poetry?" he famously replied, "Yes. Many men. Many women. And many children."
Re: Ossian, the ‘Homer of the North’, the greatest literary hoax (2016)
#8What was the original source that Macpherson was supposed to be translating from? An ancient book? Oral tradition? Something else?
Re: Ossian, the ‘Homer of the North’, the greatest literary hoax (2016)
#9Read it in grad school (for an English PhD). And honestly, that's the only context in which I'd recommend doing so. It's a dreary slog of a book; we were reading it more for its historical importance than for any particular literary quality. But I don't recall anyone at the time (mid 90s) doubting that the book was a forgery -- a somewhat inept mish-mash of Celtic literary figures and motifs. The interesting part was…
Well it's a real work of fiction. No matter who the actual author is, the work exists as (not so great, you say) literature, it's not a fake roswell alien. Why wouldn't it have fans or imitators?
Re: Ossian, the ‘Homer of the North’, the greatest literary hoax (2016)
#10Usually the "I found and translated this old work" gimmick is presented within the text, not outside it. That aside, digital humanities work can be interesting, but I found a preprint of the actual paper ( https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.00142.pdf ) and their conclusion seems to be "Ossian is closer to these Irish works than it is to Homer". I'm not going to bother digging into their methods to see if they're plausible, b…
> Usually the "I found and translated this old work" gimmick is presented within the text, not outside it.
This was such a common trope in 18th century fiction that I'm surprised anyone took it at face value.