New Approaches to Ossian Symposium

The first collected edition of James Macpherson’s Ossian poems, The Works of Ossian was published in two volumes in 1765. To mark the 250th anniversary of this significant cultural event and the development of a new online resource, Ossian Online, a one-day symposium and public lecture will be held in the Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson street, Dublin on Friday 4 September 2015.

Reflecting the diversity of Ossian’s appeal, the symposium will feature speakers from a range of disciplines, presenting papers on new and recent research on Macpherson’s work. These talks will present new perspectives on familiar topics such as the role and meaning of Ireland in Ossian and Gaelic sources for the poetry, alongside considerations of the current status of Ossian studies in the academy and its potential place in public humanities. Digital humanities projects that focus on Ossian are represented by presentations on Ossian Online and on network analysis of the Ossian corpus. The symposium concludes with a public lecture by James Mulholland (North Carolina State University) on “Ossian and the Global Crisis in Authenticity”.

Attendance is free, but delegates are asked to register for the symposium on the Eventbrite website where you can also access the full programme.

This symposium is supported by the Irish Research Council’s New Foundations Scheme. Ossian Online is supported by the Moore Institute; School of Humanities, National University of Ireland, Galway; and the National Library of Scotland.