| Zusammenfassung: | This essay examines Scott's The Antiquary in relation to the controversy around James Macpherson's Poems of Ossian . Although explicit discussion of Ossian in The Antiquary is mainly confined to Jonathan Oldbuck's comic dialogue with his hot-headed Highland nephew Hector MacIntyre in volume I, chapter 3, the essay argues that the debate was actually central to the larger issue of the ethnic origins and modern identity of the Scots, dramatized in the arguments between the ‘Gothic’ Oldbuck and the ‘Celtic’ Sir Arthur Wardour throughout the novel. Oldbuck's planned epic The Caledoniad is discussed in relation to Macpherson's epic Fingal, and I conclude with a suggestion that the often-criticized ‘invasion plot’ of The Antiquary might have been inspired by that of Fingal , and also Macpherson's earlier poem The Highlander . Scott's irenic vision of Britain in The Antiquary thus resolves ethnic conflict between Goths and Celts in the interest of national unity.
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