“Blood, Breasts and Deer: Translating the Gendered Violence of Ossian in Eighteenth-Century Europe and Russia”

This paper examines how gender thematics in the Ossianic episode ‘Duchommar and Morna’ were altered first through Macpherson’s revisions and then via translations extending across eighteenth-century Europe and into Russia, progressively becoming part of a more conventional narrative. Macpherson diminished Morna’s agency, recasting her as a passive victim, while sexualizing and sensationalizing her death. Kostrov and Smirnov joined other translators in further aligning the text with contemporary tastes and reinforcing patriarchal sensibilities. They, too, stumbled over Macpherson’s hunting metaphors and intensified voyeuristic language, even suggesting Morna’s complicity in provoking male violence. The paper illustrates how translation practice reshaped Ossianic gendered violence and thus the text’s significance for readers in Europe and Russia.