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Ossian (; Irish Gaelic/Scottish Gaelic: ''Oisean'') is the narrator and purported author of a cycle of epic poems published by the Scottish poet James Macpherson from 1760. Macpherson claimed to have collected word-of-mouth material in Gaelic, said to be from ancient sources, and that the work was his translation of that material. Ossian is based on Oisín, son of Finn or Fionn mac Cumhaill, anglicised to Finn McCool, a legendary bard who is a character in Irish mythology. Contemporary critics were divided in their view of the work's authenticity, but the consensus since is that Macpherson framed the poems himself, based on old folk tales he had collected, and that "Ossian" is, in the words of Thomas Curley, "the most successful literary falsehood in modern history."〔Thomas M. Curley, ''Samuel Johnson, the Ossian Fraud, and the Celtic Revival in Great Britain and Ireland'' (Cambridge U.P.) 2009, Introduction. Curley outlines the activity of Samuel Johnson in debunking the "Ossianic" texts, and reviews the mass of scholarship regarding Macpherson's Ossian since.〕 The work was internationally popular, translated into all the literary languages of Europe and was influential both in the development of the Romantic movement and the Gaelic revival. "The contest over the authenticity of Macpherson's pseudo-Gaelic productions," Curley asserts, "became a seismograph of the fragile unity within restive diversity of imperial Great Britain in the age of Johnson." Macpherson's fame was crowned by his burial among the literary giants in Westminster Abbey. W.P. Ker, in the ''Cambridge History of English Literature'', observes that "all Macpherson's craft as a philological impostor would have been nothing without his literary skill."〔In ''The Cambridge History of English Literature'', vol. 10 "The Age of Johnson": "The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages" p. 228.〕 ==The poems== In 1760 Macpherson published the English-language text ''Fragments of ancient poetry, collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and translated from the Gaelic or Erse language''. Later that year, he claimed to have obtained further manuscripts and in 1761 he claimed to have found an epic on the subject of the hero Fingal, written by Ossian. The name Fingal or ''Fionnghall'' means "white stranger". According to Macpherson's prefatory material, his publisher, claiming that there was no market for these works except in English, required that they be translated. Macpherson published these translations during the next few years, culminating in a collected edition, ''The Works of Ossian'', in 1765. The most famous of these Ossianic poems was ''Fingal'', written in 1762. The supposed original poems are translated into poetic prose, with short and simple sentences. The mood is epic, but there is no single narrative, although the same characters reappear. The main characters are Ossian himself, relating the stories when old and blind, his father Fingal (very loosely based on the Irish hero Fionn mac Cumhaill), his dead son Oscar (also with an Irish counterpart), and Oscar's lover Malvina (like Fiona a name invented by Macpherson), who looks after Ossian in his old age. Though the stories "are of endless battles and unhappy loves", the enemies and causes of strife are given little explanation and context.〔Okun, 328〕 Characters are given to killing loved ones by mistake, and dying of grief, or of joy. There is very little information given on the religion, culture or society of the characters, and buildings are hardly mentioned. The landscape "is more real than the people who inhabit it. Drowned in eternal mist, illuminated by a decrepit sun or by emphemeral meteors, it is a world of greyness."〔 Fingal is king of a region of south-west Scotland perhaps similar to the historical kingdom of Dál Riata and the poems appear to be set around the 3rd century, with the "king of the world" mentioned being the Roman Emperor; Macpherson and his supporters detected references to Caracalla (d. 217, as "Caracul") and Carausius (d. 293, as "Caros", the "king of ships").〔("A Dissertation concerning the Aera of Ossian" ), published as prefatory matter in later editions of the poems.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ossian」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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