Cristea, S. N. "Ossian v. Homer: An Eighteenth-Century Controversy; Melchior Cesarotti and the Struggle for Literary Freedom." Italian Studies XXIV (1969): 93-111.

Discusses the first extensive translation, sold in book form, of Ossian's poetry. The translator was an Italian, Melchior Cesarotti, who, Cristea explains, used the poems of Ossian to attack Homer.

Edmunds, Kathryn. "'der Gesang soll deinen Namen erhalten': Ossian, Werther, and Texts of / for Mourning." Goethe Yearbook VIII (1996): 44-65.

Examines the influence of Ossian on Goethe's Werther.

Krause, David. "The Hidden Oisín." In The Profane Book of Irish Comedy, pp. 58-104. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.

Surveys the oral traditions surrounding the "mythic Oisín or Usheen," asserting that in medieval and later Celtic literature, the character was a comical and mock-heroic figure. The critic argues that Macpherson distorted original materials and employed "a maximum of rhetorical extravagance, which was his own fiction" to create a hero "to suit the mood of his time."

Lowery, Margaret Ruth. "'Imagination Kindled at Antique Fires."' In Windows of the Morning: A Critical Study of William Blake's "Poetical Sketches," 1783, pp. 170-93. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940.

Portions of this chapter analyze the influence of Macpherson's Ossian on the poetry of William Blake.

Malek, James S. "Eighteenth-Century British Dramatic Adaptations of Macpherson's 'Ossian'." Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research XIV (May 1975): 36-41, 52.

Surveys dramatic works adapted from the works of Macpherson's Ossian. The critic examines plays which owe their plot, characters, settings, and atmosphere to Ossian, as well as plays which drew from Ossian for characters, setting, and atmosphere alone.

Metzdorf, Robert F. "M'Nicol, Macpherson, and Johnson." In Eighteenth-Century Studies in Honor of Donald F. Hyde, edited by W. H. Bond, pp. 45-61. New York: The Grolier Club, 1970.

Discusses Macpherson's methods of literary debate, particularly his dispute with Samuel Johnson over the Ossianic poems.

Moore, John Robert. "Wordsworth's Unacknowledged Debt to Macpherson's 'Ossian'." Publications of the Modern Language Association of America XL, No. 2 (June 1925): 362-78.

Maintains that despite Wordsworth's "professed contempt for Macpherson's 'translation' as a worth-less forgery," he in fact was familiar with the Ossianic poems, borrowed words and phrases from them, treated themes related to the poems, and presented "images or lines to which parallels may be found in Ossian."

Potkay, Adam. "Virtue and Manners in Macpherson's Poems of Ossian." PMLA 107, No. 1 (January 1992): 120-30.

Argues that the eighteenth-century appeal of Ossianic poems rested in … "their distinctly contemporary concerns" such as the representation of manners.