Rix, Robert. Thomas Percy's Antiquarian Alternative to Ossian
- Author: Rix, Robert
- Title: Thomas Percy's Antiquarian Alternative to Ossian
- Published in: Journal of Folklore Research 46/2
- Year: 2009
- Pages: 197-229
- E-text:
- Reference: Rix, Robert. "Thomas Percy's Antiquarian Alternative to Ossian." Journal of Folklore Research 46/2 (2009): 197-229.
- Key words: translation, poetry (þýðingar, kveðskapur)
Annotation
On Thomas Percy's Five Pieces of Runic Poetry Translated from the Islandic Language (1763). This anthology of Norse verse ("The Incantation of Hervor", "The Dying Ode of Regner Lodbrog", "The Ransome of Egill the Scald", "The Funeral Song of Hacon" and "The Complaint of Harold") has garnered less attention than Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) but was "conceived as part of the same national project" (p. 197). The poems Percy translated from Old Icelandic were presented as representative of what Anglo-Saxon verse would have been, a custodian tradition compensating for a dearth of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts in England from which to draw. The anthology was written as a direct response to James Macpherson's Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1760), i.e., the Ossianic poems, which Macpherson claimed were based on oral materials. In his editing practices and presentation of the texts, Percy emphasises the written (and thus incontrovertibly authentic) nature of his sources.
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