James Macpherson

Text from a publication describing the life and career of one of Dundee’s most significant artists, the Celtic Revival and symbolist painter Stewart Carmichael (1867-1950), produced to accompany the acclaimed 2017 exhibition in the Lamb Gallery, University of Dundee.

Spurred by antiquarianism and the quest for a pan-Celtic, non-classical mythology, two infamous translators and forgers sparked influential and prolific artistic production in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. James Macpherson (1736-1796) and his Ossian provided fuel to the fire stoked by Napoleon Bonaparte for a new imperial art, and Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg, 1747-1826) contributed to an ardent cultural revival in Wales. Both writers have garnered renewed scholarly attention in recent decades, mostly focused on uncovering the genuine Celtic and medieval sources from which they so liberally borrowed. However, scant attention has been paid to the art inspired by Macpherson and Morganwg, especially in comparison with each other. Often art media featuring neo-Celtic bards are broadly categorized together under the term “Early Romanticism.” While there are meaningful parallels in the art of Napoleonic France and the art of the Welsh Celtic Revival, understanding their differ...

The document is an excerpt from a proposed thesis that examines the overlooked 'Atlantic Facade' Culture and its portrayal in the "Ossian" poems. • Thesis Overview: The author seeks to comprehend the cultural niche of the 'Atlantic Facade' Culture through various perspectives and psychological analysis.

A range of leading international scholars provide the reader with a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the extraordinary richness and diversity of Scotland’s poetry. Addressing Languages and Chronologies, Poetic Forms, and Topics and Themes, this International Companion covers the entire subject from from the early Middle Ages to the modern day, and explores the connections, influences and interrelations between English, Gaelic, Latin, Old Norse and Scots verse.

This paper is form’d of two parts, with the second growing quite naturally out of the first. Those parts, then, are as follows:

Part One - The Fianna : The section of the paper involves the continuation of my work with the Pictish Dynasties. This time round I shall be focussing on the IVth dynasty, in which lineage a good few kings, in sequence, are connected to the semi-mythical group of warriors known as the Fianna. This heroic warrior caste was reputedly active in Ireland & Scotland in the 2nd & 3rd centuries of the Common Era, whose central figure was the ever-famous Fionn mac Cumhaill / Finn McCool.

Part Two - the Sami : Just as Howard Carter found a seal for Tutankhamun at the Valley of the Kings, initiating his theory that the famous boy king was buried there, not three hundred miles away at Amarna; I have found a clue during my research on the IVth dynasty which form’d a connection between mysterious symbols on the Pictish stones, & the Sami tribes of northernmost Scandinavia.

Spośród wielu udokumentowanych źródłowo dawnych fałszerstw i mistyfikacji, po krótkim wstępie, autor przedstawia trzy przykłady, jeden z XVIII wieku, dwa z XIX wieku, wszystkie bezpośrednio lub pośrednio związane z Polską, należące do kategorii mistyfikacji, mających na celu gloryfikację narodu poprzez wykazanie jego starożytności i/lub wysokiej kultury. Prekursorem tej tradycji był szkocki pisarz z XVIII wieku, James Macpherson, z  opowieściami o Osjanie, a w  XIX wieku najgłośniejsze były rzekomo starożytne (w rzeczywistości stworzone przez Vaclava Hankę) rękopisy staroczeskie. Ich historycznej doniosłości i artyzmowi nie dorównywała kronika rzekomego Prokosza, ujawniona i wydana drukiem przez Hipolita Kownackiego w 1825 r., próbująca cofnąć początki Polski głęboko przed wersję utrwaloną przed wiekami przez biskupa krakowskiego Wincentego Kadłubka. Głównym tematem artykułu, oprócz krótkiego przypomnienia treści kroniki, jest dyskusja naukowa prowadzona w XIX wieku i wznowiona w naszych czasach przez zwolenników teorii o rzekomo tysiącletniej historii Słowian/Polaków. Ponadto, w artykule omówiono kwestię tzw. idoli prillwickich (z Meklemburgii), odkrytych w XVIII w. i  uznawanych wówczas za dowód kultu religijnego Słowian Połabskich; oraz ujawnionych w połowie XIX w. kamieni z Mikorzyna z rzekomymi runami i postaciami bóstw słowiańskich.

The pioneering Ossian exhibitions held in Paris and Hamburg in 1974 had as their focus the response of northern European artists to James Macpherson's work around 1800. Because of the substantial nature of those exhibitions, and the lack of any major Ossian exhibition since, it has been easy to assume that one needs look no further for responses to Ossian in visual art. This paper considers why it is necessary to take a wider perspective. Alongside the widely acknowledged work of the French painter Girodet, note is taken of work of little acknowledged Ossian artists such as the English landscape painter J. M. W. Turner and his close contemporary the Italian sculptor and graphic artist Luigi Zandomeneghi. The research was given particular impetus by the rediscovery in 2013 of Turner's Ossian painting from 1802, Ben Lomond Mountains, Scotland: The Traveller -Vide Ossian's 'War of Caros'. Thanks to the Cesarotti Project at the University of Padua, the identification of that Turner can be complemented here by an awareness of Luigi Zandomeneghi's substantial set of Ossian images printed in Venice in 1817. The paper draws to a conclusion with a discussion is the reuse by Italian artists of a

L’edizione della Mascheroniana fu interrotta dopo la pubblicazione dei primi tre canti nell’estate del 1801; gli ultimi due, sui quali Monti continuò a lavorare per qualche tempo, convinto di poter completare la pubblicazione del poemetto, rimasero inediti fin dopo la morte del poeta. Il contributo offre uno studio della tradizione degli ultimi due canti e giunge alla proposta di un testo critico. I testimoni a disposizione, per lo più autografi, o a stampa con correzioni autografe, consentono inoltre di entrare nell’officina del poeta e di analizzarne le abitudini di lavoro.

In 1760 James Macpherson published the first volume of a series of epic poems which he claimed to have translated into English from ancient Scottish-Gaelic sources. The poems, which purported to have been composed by a third-century bard named Ossian, quickly achieved wide international acclaim. They invited comparisons with major works of the epic tradition, including Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and effected a profound influence on the emergent Romantic period in literature and the arts. However, the work also provoked one of the most famous literary controversies of all time, colouring the reception of the poetry to this day. The authenticity of the poems was questioned by some scholars, while others protested that they misappropriated material from Irish mythological sources. Recent years have seen a growing critical interest in Ossian, initiated by revisionist and counter-revisionist scholarship and by the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the first collected edition of the poems in 1765. Here we investigate Ossian from a networks-science point of view. We compare the connectivity structures underlying the societies described in the Ossianic narratives with those of ancient Greek and Irish sources. Despite attempts, from the outset, to position Ossian alongside the Homeric epics and to distance it from Irish sources, our results indicate significant network-structural differences between Macpherson's text and those of Homer. They also show a strong similarity between Ossianic networks and those of the narratives known as Acallam na Senórach (Colloquy of the Ancients) from the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology.

I would like to thank the following people who have inspired, supported, guided and encouraged me during the work of this thesis. I am most grateful for my director of studies Prof Ralph Kenna whose patience, teaching and guidance went far beyond the call of duty. I have been so privileged to have someone who cared so much about my work and my progression. I am so thankful for all the opportunities that were made available to me, I met good friends, and I had fruitful research collaborations. I am indebted to my supervisor Pádraig MacCarron for his unwavering support in and outside academia. Completion would have been difficult without his support. I appreciate how he got me into coding. A very special thank you to Thierry Platini who became a sounding board for many of my ideas and for helping me with the mathematics behind this work. And of course a big thank you, to Robin de Regt and Petro Sarkanych, for their enormous help with proof reading and other ad hoc tasks. I would like to say a heartfelt thank you to my wife Kumbulani for her encouragement and support especially during the writing-up stage. "I did not know you are such a powerful motivational speaker". Thanks also to my mum gogo Yose and my two lovely daughters, Kay and Kaylee for making it possible for me to complete what I started. You have not only been helpful but done so in a very much needed humorous way. And finally but most importantly, thanks (Dyakuyu) to my friends and fellow PhD students at AMRC and ICMP

In 1760 James Macpherson published the first volume of a series of epic poems which he claimed to have translated into English from ancient Scottish-Gaelic sources. The poems, which purported to have been composed by a third-century bard named Ossian, quickly achieved wide international acclaim. They invited comparisons with major works of the epic tradition, including Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and effected a profound influence on the emergent Romantic period in literature and the arts. However, the work also provoked one of the most famous literary controversies of all time, colouring the reception of the poetry to this day. The authenticity of the poems was questioned by some scholars, while others protested that they misappropriated material from Irish mythological sources. Recent years have seen a growing critical interest in Ossian, initiated by revisionist and counter-revisionist scholarship and by the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the first collected edition of the poems in 1765. Here we investigate Ossian from a networks-science point of view. We compare the connectivity structures underlying the societies described in the Ossianic narratives with those of ancient Greek and Irish sources. Despite attempts, from the outset, to position Ossian alongside the Homeric epics and to distance it from Irish sources, our results indicate significant network-structural differences between Macpherson's text and those of Homer. They also show a strong similarity between Ossianic networks and those of the narratives known as Acallam na Senórach (Colloquy of the Ancients) from the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology.

Patrick Geddes was a pioneering ecologist, an influential botanist, a highlyoriginal theorist of cities, an advocate of the importance of the arts to everyday life, a committed community activist, a publisher, a founder of town planning, and-of course-an educator. He was born at Ballater on 2 October 1854 and spent most of his childhood and youth in Perth. For the major part of his career the Outlook Tower in Edinburgh was the point of reference for his international activities, first in Europe and later in India and Palestine. He died at the Scots College he had founded at Montpellier in the South of France on 17 April 1932. He had a life of extraordinary vitality, variety and interest. He was appointed in 1888 as the first Professor of Botany at University College, Dundee. Thirty years later he became the first Professor of Civics and Sociology at the University of Bombay, a university that he himself had helped to found. As a student he studied evolution with T. H. Huxley in London, where he came into direct contact with Darwin. Later in that city he was one of the founders of the Sociological Society. Back in Edinburgh, in the 1880s he supported the conservation and development of Old Town communities through his founding of the Edinburgh Social Union, and in the 1890s, shifting to an educational role, he commissioned and subsequently worked from the iconic Arts and Crafts condominium of Ramsay Garden in which we find ourselves. There he was a moving force behind the Celtic Revival in Scotland. In his magazine, The Evergreen, Geddes advocated not just a Celtic Revival but a Scottish renascence, an idea that Hugh MacDiarmid adopted to great effect. Geddes' commitment to national revival was profoundly international in outlook. As a student, both from a scientific and a cultural perspective he was drawn to France where he studied biology in Paris and Brittany, and 1 A version of this paper was given as The Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland's 'Sir Patrick Geddes Commemorative Lecture' at the Royal Society of Edinburgh in May 2009. It was subsequently published in Scottish Affairs. A revised version was presented at a seminar organised by Cairns Craig, exploring Geddes' significance, at Ramsay Garden, Edinburgh, in November 2010. The paper has been revised further for this publication.

I reflect here upon traces of commercial telegraphy and postal relay in the writings of Adam Smith and James Macpherson. With perspectives gleaned from the discourse analysis of Bernhard Siegert and Friedrich Kittler, we can perceive how evolving networks of commerce and communication in the newly-integrated terrain of eighteenth-century Scotland were presciently theorized by Smith and imaginatively enacted by Macpherson in his renditions of Ossianic poetry. I will explore a few select passages from their work as early thought experiments in juridical, economic, and poetic communication and situate these passages as reflexive products of a rapidly expanding global empire. 1 I am building here on ideas and material from my recent study, Ossianic Unconformities: Bardic Poetry in the Industrial Age, in which I examine geographical vindications of Macpherson's work in the context of nineteenth-century industrial and environmental history. 2 In this brief essay, I place more emphasis on technologies of exchange rather than representations of place. The reception of the poems of Ossian

nato a Londra nel 1608, dovette al padre la conoscenza delle lingue classiche e moderne, che fece di lui il più dotto dei poeti inglesi (e, anche se Milton non poteva saperlo, una gran fonte di ispirazione per il 99% dei gruppi di Symphonic Black Metal. Nota di Lunaria)

Conversing with Mr Macpherson, Mr Home found that he was an exceedingly good classical scholar; and was not a little pleased that he had met with one who was a native of the remote Highlands, and likely to give him some information concerning the ancient poetry of his country. Accordingly, when Mr Macpherson was questioned on that subject, he said that he had in his possession several pieces of ancient poetry. When Mr Home desired to see them, Mr Macpherson asked if he understood the Gaelic? 'Not one word.' 'Then, how can I show you them?' 'Very easily,' said Mr Home; 'translate one of the poems which you think a good one, and I imagine that I shall be able to form some opinion of the genius and character of the Gaelic poetry.' Mr Macpherson declined the task, saying, that his translation would give a very imperfect idea of the original. Mr Home, with some difficulty, persuaded him to try, and in a day or two he brought him the poem on the death of Oscar; with which Mr Home was so pleased, that in a few days two or three more were brought to him, which Mr Home carried to Edinburgh, and shewed them to Dr Blair, Dr Fergusson, Dr Robertson, and Lord Elibank, who were no less pleased with them than he had been. In the course of the year, Mr Home carried the translations which Mr Macpherson had given him to London, where they were equally admired 1. Identity has always been a core issue in Scottish studies and a very touchy subject in Scotland. In 731 AD, the Venerable Bede defined the Scots as Irish 1 J. Home, testimonial (undated) to Report of the Committee of the Highland Society of Scotland appointed to investigate the nature and authenticity of the poems ascribed to Ossian, edited by H.

EXCERPTS:
"If literary history were a stage and literary historians were the magicians, Ossian would have to be considered the appearing and disappearing elephant of the magic act: a phenomenon of overwhelming proportions conjured up from an empty box, made to parade on the stage for all to see and admire in wonder for a time, and then made to vanish into thin air again, as if it had never existed."

"The translations of Ossian/Macpherson's poems contributed to breaking down existing literary and cultural paradigms wherever they were introduced, i.e., everywhere in Europe.  With their emphasis on nature, sentiment, and heroic tra¬dition, these poems, in whatever language they were presented, provided an alternative, or an anti¬dote, to the dominant values and standards of the Enlightenment and Neoclassicism."

"One reason the poems remained popular outside of the British Isles may be that the Scottish nationalism implicit in the poetry and perceived as a menace in Britain was either of little consequence in other countries or was actually perceived as an attractive feature.  In fact, in places like Germany and Italy, which were belatedly aspiring to nationhood in the nineteenth century, a discourse that seemed to champion the cause of native nationalism while opposing foreign domination appealed greatly to patriotic intellectuals and political leaders struggling for national independence."

Proprietà letteraria riservata Riproduzione, in qualsiasi forma, intera o parziale, vietata L'Editore è a disposizione di tutti gli eventuali proprietari di diritti sulle immagini riprodotte con i quali non sia stato possibile mettersi in contatto

IT IS FASHIONABLE within certain circles of Scottish studies to categorize Scotland's condition as a colonial one. Equally, those outwith these circles often fail to notice Scotland's existence at all. For one African postcolonial writer, John Buchan is an" English" novelist; for Edward Said, the case of Ireland is as colonial as the case of Burma, but the case of Scotland does not exist. Irish Britishness, a profound agency in the cultural and political life of what is now the Republic is expunged, while Scotland is still submerged in a generic ...

As mudanças mentais ocorridas no século XVII e a resultante separação entre os antigos e os modernos, nos séculos seguintes (XVIII e XIX) acarretaram transformações semânticas substanciais na relação com a herança clássica. Entre essas mudanças (bem demonstradas pelo culto romântico da originalidade), destacam-se as novas categorias e formas em que a experiência humana foi modelada, cujos modelos teóricos e narrativos propunham um novo gênero: a história nacional. A certeza de superação dos antigos foi também responsável pelo plural de antiguidades nacionais. Surpreendentemente, porém, essas novas narrativas revelar-se-iam em grande dívida para com a tradição clássica: principalmente, na formulação heroica dessas novas antiguidades.

The opera libretto Comala (1774) by Ranieri Calzabigi has traditionally been regarded as one of the poet’s lesser creations. It has sometimes been dismissed as being too closely based on Melchiorre Cesarotti’s influential Italian translation from 1763 of the eponymous dramatic poem, which James Macpherson included in his 1762 collection of the songs of Ossian, adapted or translated from Gaelic oral poems. In the present article, however, the author argues that Calzabigi’s Comala was not only an independent adaptation but also a highly original attempt to translate the peculiar poetic and cultural features of the Ossianic world – its savagery, sublimity, melancholy, and psychological obscurity – into theatrical terms. In this experimental musical drama, Calzabigi depicts the mysterious death of the overstrung heroine as the culmination of a process of withdrawing physically from the other characters and ultimately from the stage itself, as a metaphor for her gradual withdrawal from l...

"Ossian served the needs of the Risorgimento, by providing a model of cultural resurgence, but, since it was a model from abroad, it kept the more nefarious consequences of resurgent nationalistic ideology at bay.
Ossian's fate, from unprecedented universal acclaim throughout European letters to virtual oblivion, illustrates how aesthetics and poetics are linked to ideology and politics, and how canon formation results from and contributes to the socio-political ethos of a culture.  The elephantine phenomenon of Ossianism may have appeared on the literary stage as out of thin air and then disappeared out of sight again, but its imposing presence while it lasted made a substantial difference in the evolution of European societies and wrought cultural changes which, to a certain extent, still shape our contemporary aesthetic sensibilities, which in turn inform our ideologies and our social attitudes and behavior."

Dopo aver ripercorso le tappe dell'affermazione del giardino inglese nel Settecento, il contributo esamina il dibattito teorico sui giardini inglesi svoltosi presso l'Accademia patavina di Lettere Scienze ed Arti, dibattito di cui Melchiorre Cesarotti è uno dei principali promotori. ...

This dissertation is invested in correlating the antithetical synthesis brought about by Ossian's longest narratives, Fingal and Temora, to the rise of the eighteenth-century novel. As Hugh Blair inadvertently showed in his Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian, James Macpherson's most ambitious 'translations' conflate opposing primitivistic and neoclassical discourses, thereby emerging as unredeemably fractured and unstable epics, if one reads them in compliance with their ostensive generic label. Instead, I argue that the contradictory form of Fingal and Temora re-enacts that of eighteenthcentury novelistic narratives, which problematize the distance between narrator and narrated.

Spurred by antiquarianism and the quest for a pan-Celtic, non-classical mythology, two infamous translators and forgers sparked influential and prolific artistic production in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. James Macpherson (1736-1796) and his Ossian provided fuel to the fire stoked by Napoleon Bonaparte for a new imperial art, and Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg, 1747-1826) contributed to an ardent cultural revival in Wales. Both writers have garnered renewed scholarly attention in recent decades, mostly focused on uncovering the genuine Celtic and medieval sources from which they so liberally borrowed. However, scant attention has been paid to the art inspired by Macpherson and Morganwg, especially in comparison with each other. Often art media featuring neo-Celtic bards are broadly categorized together under the term "Early Romanticism." While there are meaningful parallels in the art of Napoleonic France and the art of the Welsh Celtic Revival, understanding their differences offers valuable insights and a more sophisticated view of the period to which they belonged. Both nations were experiencing tremendous but totally different upheavals, yet their artists used mirroring subject matter to express popular sentiments. Why was the Bard such a popular, and indeed political, figure in the art of France and Wales? In this paper, I offer a comparative analysis of the Bard viewed through the lens of the paintings, poetry, music and sculpture of French Ossianism and the Welsh Celtic Revival. Artists of both nations were inspired to use the Bard as a conduit to express social and civic flux, nationality, and liminality, but to different ends. Ultimately, the Bard was an artistic implement for nation building in both France and Wales, but the differences illuminate the historical contexts of each. By closely examining and contrasting the Bard as a singular subject matter in art, this study offers a new perspective on this under-explored part of European art history.

Siiblimr savage: a study ofJames Macpherson and the porrns of Ossian (Edinburgh, Edinburgh IJniversity Press 1988), p.183; and Howard D. Weinbrot. Britannia's issue: the rise of British Literaturr from Dryden to Ossian (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1993). p.481-556. Weinbrot writes: 'Ossian also suggests the triumph of English power within the British nation. for whatever fame Macpherson achieves in Scotland and even Europe. his financial destiny and literary and moral reputation depended upon the South' (p.529). British joirrnalfor eighteenth-century studilics L L (1~9~). p.155-71

This is an edition of a Hebrew translation of the first part of the opening of James Macpherson's "Fingal", attributed to the ancient blind poet Ossian. Translated immediately upon its first publication to Italian by Melchiorre Cesarotti, the text was translated from Italian to Hebrew by the rabbi and poet Pinḥas Ashkenazi (Felice Tedeschi).

Riassunto: Dopo lo status quaestionis sugli studi relativi a Leoni e alle versioni shakespeariane maggiori, elaborate nell'Italia dell'Ottocento, l'articolo rende conto delle modalità di traduzione adottate da Leoni nei confronti degli scrittori classici, di Ossian e dello stesso Shakespeare. Si segnala la continuità stilistica fra le sue versioni shakespeariane e quelle, posteriori, di Rusconi e di Carcano. Infine si offrono prospettive di ricerca per l'opera multiforme di Leoni, per la sua figura culturale complessa e per lo studio delle traduzioni ottocentesche, spesso legate strettamente da scelte stilistiche affini e sempre il frutto di un confronto con modelli testuali ritenuti esemplari: ne risulta confortata la continuità fra 'letteratura tradotta" e "letteratura in lingua".

Abstract: After the state of the art concerning scientific research on Michele Leoni and on the major Italian 19th century Shakspeare translations, the article tackles Leoni's translation modes for classical works, for Ossian and for Shakespeare. The stylistic continuity between his translation of Shakespeare's plays and the later Rusconi and Carcano translations is highlighted. Finally, the article suggests research tracks for Leoni's many-sided own literary works, for his complex cultural activities and, generally spoken, for the 19th century translations, often linked through similar stylistic features and always involved with textual models which could stand as a literary model: hence, a major continuity between "literature in translation" and "original literature". Status quaestionis Già nel 1818 Michele Leoni (1776-1858) appariva a Pietro Borsieri come l'«Ercole de' traduttori», dedito essenzialmente alla trasposizione in italiano di testi «romantici». Così si leggeva in una recensione del «Conciliatore» alla versione di Leoni della Scuola della maldicenza di Sheridan 1. Tanta fama non sarebbe stata da lui tradita dopo gli anni trascorsi a Milano e a Firenze: tornato a Parma nel 1822, avrebbe spostato l'accento della propria attività di traduttore sulle opere classiche. La sua bibliografia è molto ampia, sebbene un censimento moderno sia stato fatto solo per le traduzioni dall'inglese e dal francese 2. Limitandoci alle prime edizioni, si contano ben 48 titoli, articolati anche in volumi miscellanei, dedicati ad autori diversi. Di là dal suo impegno come traduttore, la multiforme attività del tragediografo, del poeta e del saggista storico-artistico è stata documentata in tempi recenti attraverso una monografia del 1984 e con la voce del Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 3. Altri studi biografici sulla figura complessa di Leoni ne hanno indagato un periodo limitato, per quanto di assoluto rilievo nella vita e nell'attività dell'autore: tale fu la sua permanenza decennale a Firenze (1812-1822), dove non rimase sordo all'appello di Vieusseux a favore dell'«Antologia», cui collaborò entusiasticamente nella fase iniziale della rivista 4. 1 P. [P. BORSIERI], La Scuola della Maldicenza. Commedia di Riccardo Brinsley Sheridan, tradotta da Michele Leoni (Firenze, presso Jacopo Balaresi, 1818), in «Il Conciliatore», I (1819), p 173. 2 C. FAZZARI, Bibliografia delle traduzioni dall'inglese e dal francese di Michele Leoni, «La Rassegna della letteratura italiana», LXXII

L'Inghilterra nell'Italia dei Lumi tra Shakespeare e Jenner Straordinario e pieno di sentieri interrotti e ramificazioni inattese il percorso dell'anglomania nell'Italia del Settecento. Arturo Graf, letterato geniale ed ombroso, ne delineò una prima rassegna-rimasta fondamentale-nel 1911, nel suo Anglomania, appunto. Nel 2019, il terzo centenario della nascita di Giuseppe Baretti-che nacque a Torino, la città della maturità di Graf, il 24 aprile 1719-ha dato vita a pubblicazioni e congressi in diverse prestigiose sedi, e indubbiamente Baretti fu al centro del rapporto culturale, biunivoco, costante ed intenso, che il Regno Unito (dal 1707, quando la Scozia nolens volens vi entra), ebbe con la cultura italiana: una cultura vivacissima in ogni Stato nel frammentario mosaico dell'Antico Regime, in quel "Settecento riformatore"-e ricordare un Maestro qual fu Franco Venturi sempre giova-modello di civiltà e moderazione. In principio fu Newton, senz'altro...

This essay interrogates the role of Scottish ethno-cultural affiliation in the fiction of Alistair MacLeod and Alice Munro, and the problematic misrecognitions fostered by the Scottish-Canadian diasporic imaginary in their popular and influential work.

Drawing on Freud’s ‘narcissism of small differences’, this essay traces a pattern whereby anxieties internal to the Canadian literary self-image are projected onto Scotland, where they attain the dignity and stability of ‘tradition’. Identification with this idealised image represents a sublimation of Canadian self-involvement, and its conversion into a healthier attachment to an external fantasy object (the Canadian self in tartan disguise, with its readymade folkloric glamour).

This narcissistic attachment to Scotland is an important factor in Canada’s ongoing re-imagination of its British origins and affiliations. Via the closed-circuit of the diasporic heritage industry – from which neither writer’s work can be wholly separated – it also generates a potent mirage of ‘Scottishness’ for domestic consumption.