Scott
was
a
Scottish
romantic writer, the
first
great writer
of
historical
novels
. He
was
born in Edinburgh on August 15, 1771. His
father
was
an Edinburgh lawyer and had a large family. ... The
book
is
written with the great descriptive skill for
which
Scott
is
famous. He
was
a master of painting wonderfully
individualized expressive and vivid characters. The main idea of the
book
is
to call for peace and compromise.
Scott
wanted to reconcile the
hostile classes. He believed that social harmony possible if the best
representatives of all classes would unite in a struggle against evil. This
idea
is
expressed in the
novel
'Ivanhoe' in the episode when the Norman
king Richard, together with Robin Hood and his merry men, attack the
castle of the Norman.
Scott has a Romantic idea of war: he presents it as heroic, shaped by the
code of Romances. According to him the battlefield is a place where
every man can practise and show his bravery, his loyalty, his desire to
sacrifice himself for other human beings or for a cause. War is the field
of the Hero and the Rebel dissatisfied with society and its unjust rules.
War is considered an idealized moment, men fight for some right
reasons and for their ideals.
Scott doesn’t describe the atrocities of killing, he distances the violence
of a conflict transforming war into a source of imaginative pleasure, he
undercovers the horrors of war with the idea of future glory.
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Connected to this conception of war there is the cult of the individual,
typical of the Romantic age: a rebel, a hero who fights to defend people
unjustly accused, who fights to restore the just lists, against society .
Scott emphasizes heroic individual actions so a great importance is
given to single combats or duels fought according to the rules of
chivalry.
Ivanhoe can be considered the Romantic Hero: he fights on the right
side, to save Rebecca , to help Richard I; he doesn’t accept compromise,
he is ready to die for his ideals, he is characterized by a disinterested
personal virtue. Ivanhoe fights with the Anglo-Saxons against the evil
Normans: patriotism is a virtue that implies active resistance to tyranny
and oppressio, a heroic self-sacrifice for the public good. But the
sacrifice will be rewarded, in fact the heroe is destined to be separated
from the stern demands of patriotic duty and to be consigned to the
enjoyment of persoonal liberty and prosperity.
In Ivanhoe, the clash between the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans
reflects the social struggle between the aristocracy and the lower classes.
In Waverley the battlefield is also the place where the protagonist is
subjected to an evolution: the war is the moment of the moral growth of
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Waverley, he will learn loyalty and bravery The war consists also in a
cultural conflict between the jacobite rebels, who want to restore the
Stuart Dynasty on the throne, and the Hanoverians. Waverley is the
point of contact between the two opposite sides. Also in Ivanhoe the two
cultures in conflict, Anglo-Saxon and Norman, find their meeting point
in the protagonist .
First of all, we must understand that Scott was a "Romanticist," with a
capital "R." Romanticism was a literary movement of the late 18th
century which heavily emphasized the importance of nature and man's
emotions and imagination in conjunction with, and in response to, the
natural world. Be aware, too,...
After a while, Scott began to feel that with all of the knowledge he had
collected about Scottish history and Scottish culture, perhaps a longer
form than poetry might actually suit his interests and his writing style
better.
This novel Waverley was so popular that Scott was able to kick out a
new novel every one to two years for a while, and they kept selling,
which is great because making a living as a writer is not easy at any time
in history. He also kept publishing those books anonymously, and they
were only attributed to 'the author of Waverley,' which led all these
subsequent novels to be commonly referred to as 'The Waverley Series'
or 'The Waverly Novels'. Scott finally revealed that he was the author of
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the Waverley books in 1827, but it wasn't that big of a deal - a lot of
people already had suspected that for a long time, so maybe not quite the
big reveal he had hoped for.
We should spend a little time talking about a few of Scott's most popular
novels individually so you'll get a sense of the kind of plots that he
favored - I think you might notice some consistencies. In general, you
might notice that all of these books are full of characters (often with
very intricate family relations) who are usually caught up in some
twisting, potentially confusing plots like any soap opera you've ever
seen.
That's because major historical events provided the skeleton to all of
Scott's work. So, for those of us who might be unfamiliar with
Scotland's tumultuous history, some of these conflicts with their many
political and religious allegiances can be hard to follow - it's true. If
anything, though, that should give you an idea of the grand scope of
Scott's novels. He had his sights set on these really major events that had
a big impact on his country's history. He liked important characters and
sweeping action.
First published in four volumes in 1818, Scott's historical novel 'The
Heart of Mid-Lothian' is often considered to be one of his finest works.
It was published shortly after his popular novel, 'Rob Roy'.
Real places and historical events, including the 1736 Porteous Riots,
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provided inspiration for the plot. The title refers to the name of the Old
Tolbooth Prison in Edinburgh, where the character Effie Deans is
awaiting trial, accused of murdering her child. Effie's sister, Jeanie
Deans, believes she is innocent. Jeanie walks from Edinburgh to
London, to ask for a pardon for her sister from the Queen
Sir Walter Scott was a key figure in developing the historical novel and
is one of Scotland's most important authors.
Scott was crucial in creating and shaping part of Scotland's national
identity in the 19th century, and that legacy is still felt today. His
technique of setting stories in familiar historical events and bringing
together fictional characters and real-life figures proved widely popular
with readers.
First editions of Scott's novels will be on display alongside a significant
collection of his correspondence, engravings, and original manuscripts,
including 'The Heart of Mid-Lothian'.
Historical fiction as a genre is important and relevant to our times for
many reasons. It has also been one of the more popular genres of the
twentieth century world literature. There have been many novels and
short stories belonging to this genre written in the past 200 years which
have achieved cult status. Their fame and presence in literature is a
matter of curiosity. Some of the most famous novels of this genre are,
The Sea of Poppies, A Spoke in the wheel, Ivanhoe, Waverly, etc. The
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aim of this paper is to study and analyse various aspects of the historical
novel, i.e., need for fiction in a historical narrative, the defining features
of historical fiction and having a good look at works of Walter Scott,
who is generally considered to be the founder of this genre, and his “Rob
Roy” in particular.
But before we go on to define historical fiction as a genre, it is necessary
to consider those parameters which would enable a set of texts to be
termed similar and understand that it is also possible that a particular
text belongs to multiple genres, a historical tragedy for instance, which
borrows or recombines from more than one previously existing work of
literature.
Born the son of an Edinburgh lawyer, Walter Scott was born in College
Wynd, Edinburgh at the top of Guthrie Street and was raised at 25
George Square, where the family lived until the death of Walter Scott,
Senior.
The young Walter Scott attended the Royal High School and the
University of Edinburgh and was called to the bar in 1792.
Walter Scott married Charlotte Mary Carpenter in 1797 and moved to a
house in Castle Street, Edinburgh before moving to Ashestiel on the
Tweed in 1804.
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