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UID:news131@dslw.philhist.unibas.ch
DTSTAMP;TZID=Europe/Zurich:20190502T134749
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Zurich:20190516T100000
SUMMARY:Progress and Primitivism: Highland Scotland\, the Metropolitan Read
 ership and James Macpherson's 'Ossian'
DESCRIPTION:James Macpherson's immensely successful\, but also highly contr
 oversial\, Ossianic prose poems from the 1760s provide an ideal example th
 rough which we can study the confluences and conflicts between some of the
  most influential strands of eighteenth-century thought: on the one hand\,
  the preoccupation with progress\, modernity\, rationalism\, Enlightenment
 \, supposedly universal standards of social and cultural achievement (ofte
 n connected to the emulation of Classicist models)\, and the imposition of
  these standards on others by assimilating more 'backward' parts of the na
 tional population  as well as by empire-building abroad\; and on the othe
 r hand\, counter-strands of sentimentalism\, a validation of individual an
 d cultural idiosyncracies\, and a romanticisation of 'the primitive'. Macp
 herson moves at the interface of these strands: He came from the supposedl
 y 'backward' Scottish Highlands which were\, at that time\, undergoing a r
 adical and often traumatic assimilation into the British nation-state and 
 capitalist modernity. Sympathetic to the plight of Highland culture\, but 
 also a believer in modern aesthetic fashions and determined to make his wa
 y in the metropolis\, he 'translated' traditional Gaelic literature into a
  modern English form which became a centre-piece of contemporary debates o
 n civilisation\, noble savagery and national identity. Macpherson played a
 n important role in the emergence of the Romantic movement in the later ei
 ghteenth century\, and also remained a key influence on subsequent romanti
 cised images of the 'Celtic' world until the present day.\\r\\nThis guest 
 lecture introduces Macpherson and his works\, charts their position within
  the abovementioned developments\, and draws connections to more contempor
 ary debates from late-twentieth and early twenty-first-century postcolonia
 l studies\, such as cultural hybridity\, the problem of elite cosmopolitan
  writers with 'third-world' origins marketing themselves and their 'exotic
 ' backgrounds as commodities for western metropolitan audiences\, and rela
 ted questions of commodification\, complicity\, resistance and subversion.
X-ALT-DESC:James Macpherson's immensely successful\, but also highly contro
 versial\, Ossianic prose poems from the 1760s provide an ideal example thr
 ough which we can study the confluences and conflicts between some of the 
 most influential strands of eighteenth-century thought: on the one hand\, 
 the preoccupation with progress\, modernity\, rationalism\, Enlightenment\
 , supposedly universal standards of social and cultural achievement (often
  connected to the emulation of Classicist models)\, and the imposition of 
 these standards on others by assimilating more 'backward' parts of the nat
 ional population&nbsp\; as well as by empire-building abroad\; and on the 
 other hand\, counter-strands of sentimentalism\, a validation of individua
 l and cultural idiosyncracies\, and a romanticisation of 'the primitive'. 
 Macpherson moves at the interface of these strands: He came from the suppo
 sedly 'backward' Scottish Highlands which were\, at that time\, undergoing
  a radical and often traumatic assimilation into the British nation-state 
 and capitalist modernity. Sympathetic to the plight of Highland culture\, 
 but also a believer in modern aesthetic fashions and determined to make hi
 s way in the metropolis\, he 'translated' traditional Gaelic literature in
 to a modern English form which became a centre-piece of contemporary debat
 es on civilisation\, noble savagery and national identity. Macpherson play
 ed an important role in the emergence of the Romantic movement in the late
 r eighteenth century\, and also remained a key influence on subsequent rom
 anticised images of the 'Celtic' world until the present day.\nThis guest 
 lecture introduces Macpherson and his works\, charts their position within
  the abovementioned developments\, and draws connections to more contempor
 ary debates from late-twentieth and early twenty-first-century postcolonia
 l studies\, such as cultural hybridity\, the problem of elite cosmopolitan
  writers with 'third-world' origins marketing themselves and their 'exotic
 ' backgrounds as commodities for western metropolitan audiences\, and rela
 ted questions of commodification\, complicity\, resistance and subversion.
 \n\n
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Zurich:20190516T120000
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