XI International Conference of the Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia
10th-14th July 2023
Riva Evstifeeva (Université de Strasbourg, France), “The Political Contexts of Ossian’s Reception in Eighteenth-Century Europe (and Russia) through Book Dedications”
The importance of political aspects of James Macpherson’s (semi-)mystification of ancient Scotch folklore is well-known, at least to the specialist in the domain, but what about the political aspects of its European reception? For France and Germany, some attempts were made by scholars; instead, for the Russian “Ossian” only bibliographical and literary issues have been explored. In the 18th century Ossian arrived in Russia mainly (although not exclusively) through French and German mediation, but does it influence the political reading of the text in Russian context? The dedications that we find among the front matter of Ossianic translations give a valuable clue to the political context in which the translations were conceived and published. In my talk, I will compare Kostrov’s dedication to Suvorov in his translation of the Ossianic cycle in comparison with the French, German and Italian context of Ossianic reception.
