Fictions of translation:: The Celts, the canon and the question of world literature (Goethe)

Debates on postcolonial writing, canon formation and Goethe's notion of world literature can profit from reconsidering the well-known case of James Macpherson's Works of Ossian. The fictions of translation which it offered to the eighteenth-century reading public questioned ruling norms while working towards cultural change, thus helping to suggest new views on the positioning of literature in the modern world.