Enlightenment and Romance in James Macpherson’s The Poems of Ossian

This study examines the relationship between Enlightenment and romance through the work of James Macpherson and in particular his The Poems of Ossian. By re-reading Macpherson's work in ways not restricted by the sterile and by now largely settled debates over authenticity, Moore establishes Ossian's credentials to be considered as romance, in its manner of construction, its represented sensibility, and in its engagement with the potentialities and limitations of eighteenth-century discourses of