Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, Translation and Ethics

My doctoral research will bring into English, for the first time, a selected works of one of the UK’s most exciting writers and thinkers. Alasdair was an Enlightenment giant: a lexicographer, a teacher, a captain for the Jacobite army, a Gaelic language tutor to Charles Edward Stuart, otherwise known as the ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie,’ and a paradigmatic poet-provocateur. Aiserigh, or ‘Resurrection,’ his 1751 book, was the first secular work of any Celtic language to be published. It was reputedly burned by the Edinburgh hangman for obscene satire and sedition. Though celebrated through the twentieth century by the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, Alasdair’s contribution to the poetry of the British Isles has largely suffered neglect.

My research aims to produce a selected works of some of his best poems. As imitations rather than literal translations, they not only seek to be translations of poetry, but poetry in their own right. Written for the current English-language market, liberties will be taken in an attempt to emulate the power of the originals. A critical introduction will also accompany the translations. It will re-contextualize the sociopolitical, ethical and aesthetic tensions of Alasdair’s work in order to challenge the common narrative of this most enigmatic figure.