A NETWORKS-SCIENCE INVESTIGATION INTO THE EPIC POEMS OF OSSIAN

Joseph Yose, Ralph Kenna, MacCARRON Pádraig, Thierry Platini and Justin Tonra
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Joseph Yose: Applied Mathematics Research Centre, Coventry University, CV1 5FB, UK†𝕃4 Collaboration & Doctoral College for the Statistical Physics of Complex Systems, Leipzig-Lorraine-Lviv-Coventry, D-04009 Leipzig, Germany
Ralph Kenna: Applied Mathematics Research Centre, Coventry University, CV1 5FB, UK†𝕃4 Collaboration & Doctoral College for the Statistical Physics of Complex Systems, Leipzig-Lorraine-Lviv-Coventry, D-04009 Leipzig, Germany
MacCARRON Pádraig: #x2021;Social & Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, OX1 3UD, UK
Thierry Platini: Applied Mathematics Research Centre, Coventry University, CV1 5FB, UK†𝕃4 Collaboration & Doctoral College for the Statistical Physics of Complex Systems, Leipzig-Lorraine-Lviv-Coventry, D-04009 Leipzig, Germany
Justin Tonra: #xA7;Discipline of English, School of Humanities, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), 2016, vol. 19, issue 04n05, 1-24

Abstract: 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, coloring 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.

Keywords: Networks; Ossian; James Macpherson; literature; digital humanities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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DOI: 10.1142/S0219525916500089

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