Walter Scott, a founder of historical novel – his life and work

Section 1. Theoretical and methodological foundations of the study of Walter Scott's innovation in the novel genre


Chapter 1.1 Romanticism as a literary trend

Romanticism (Fr.romantisme, from medieval Fr.romant, novel) is an art direction that was formed within the framework of the general literary trend at the turn of the XVIII–XIX centuries in Germany. It is widely distributed in all countries of Europe and America. The highest peak of romanticism occurs in the first quarter of the XIX century. The French word romantisme goes back to the Spanish romance (in the Middle Ages, the so-called Spanish romances, and then the knight's novel), the English romantic, which turned into romantique in the XVIII century and then meant "strange", "fantastic","picturesque". At the beginning of the 19th century, Romanticism became the designation of a new trend, opposite to classicism.

A vivid and informative description of Romanticism was given by Turgenev in a review of the translation of Goethe's Faust, published in Otechestvennye Zapiski for 1845. Turgenev proceeds from the comparison of the romantic era with the youth of a person, just as antiquity is correlated with childhood, and Rebirth can be correlated with the adolescence of the human race. And this ratio, of course, is significant. "Every person," writes Turgenev, "in his youth experienced an era of "genius", enthusiastic arrogance, friendly gatherings and circles... He becomes the center of the world around him; he (without realizing his good-natured egoism) does not give himself up to anything; he forces everything to give himself up to himself; he lives in his heart, but alone, in his own, not someone else's heart, even in the love of which he dreams so much; he is a romantic - romanticism is nothing but apotheosis of personality. He is ready to talk about society, about social questions, about science; but society, like science, exists for him — he is not for them."
The center of the artistic system of Romanticism is the individual, and its main conflict is individuals and societies. The decisive prerequisite for the development of Romanticism was the events of the Great French Revolution. The emergence of Romanticism is associated with the anti-enlightenment movement, the reasons for which lie in disillusionment with civilization, in social, industrial, political and scientific progress, which resulted in new contrasts and contradictions, leveling and spiritual emptying of the individual.
The enlightenment preached the new society as the most "natural" and "reasonable". The best minds of Europe justified and foreshadowed this society of the future, but reality turned out to be beyond the control of "reason", the future was unpredictable, irrational, and the modern social structure began to threaten human nature and personal freedom. The rejection of this society, the protest against lack of spirituality and selfishness is already reflected in sentimentalism and pre-Romanticism. Romanticism expresses this rejection most acutely. Romanticism also opposed the Enlightenment in verbal terms: the language of romantic works, striving to be natural, "simple", accessible to all readers, represented something opposite to the classics with its noble, "sublime" theme, characteristic, for example, of classical tragedy.
Among the later Western European Romantics, pessimism in relation to society takes on cosmic proportions and becomes a "disease of the century". The characters of many romantic works (F. R. Chateaubriand, A. de Musset, J. Byron, A. de Vigny, A. Lamartine, G. Heine, etc.) are characterized by moods of hopelessness, despair, which acquire a universal character. Perfection is lost forever, the world is ruled by evil, the ancient chaos is resurrected. The theme of the "terrible world", which is characteristic of all romantic literature, was most vividly embodied in the so-called "black genre" (in the pre — romantic "Gothic novel" - A. Radcliffe, C. Maturin, in the" drama of rock", or" tragedy of rock", — Z. Werner, G. Kleist, F. Grillparzer), as well as in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Byron, C. Brentano, E. T. A. Hoffmann, E. Poe, and N. Hawthorne. The era of Romanticism was marked by the flourishing of literature, one of the distinctive features of which was a passion for social and political problems. Trying to understand the role of man in historical events, romantic writers gravitated to accuracy, concreteness, and authenticity. At the same time, their works are often set in an unusual setting for a European — for example, in the East and in America, or, for Russians, in the Caucasus or in the Crimea. So, romantic poets are mostly lyricists and poets of nature, and therefore in their work (however, just like many prose writers) a significant place is occupied by the landscape — first of all, the sea, mountains, sky, a stormy element with which the hero is connected by complex relationships. Nature can be akin to the passionate nature of the romantic hero, but it can also resist him, turn out to be a hostile force with which he is forced to fight.
Unusual and vivid pictures of nature, life, everyday life and customs of distant countries and peoples – also inspired romantics. They were looking for features that make up the first foundation of the national spirit. National identity is manifested primarily in oral folk art. Hence the interest in folklore, the processing of folklore works, the creation of their own works based on folk art. [26]

1.2 A brief overview of the biography of Walter Scott

In the autumn of 1814, English booksellers were happy to count the profits: the success of the latest novel, Waverley, or Sixty Years Ago, an anonymous novel, exceeded all expectations. In Edinburgh and London, attempts were made to unmask the mysterious incognito whose" magical fiction " attracted the tears of tens of thousands of readers; critics made bets on who the author was; additional copies of the novel followed one after another, and on the other side of the ocean, in the United States, cities and towns began to be named after its main character. The enthusiasm was unanimous. Even a strict literary connoisseur like Byron would exclaim, " ... Waverley is the most wonderful, most interesting novel I've ever read..."

Meanwhile, the creator of "Waverley" was not without pleasure at the stir he had created in the literary world, and even added fuel to the fire by publicly expressing his assumptions about the mystery of authorship. But, alas, the triumph of the hoaxer was short-lived: new novels, signed "The author of Waverley", dispelled all doubts and turned his incognito into a secret of Polichinelle. By the characteristic style, by the range of topics, by the choice of characters in anonymous, everyone easily recognized Walter Scott.
The name of Walter Scott was already well known to British literature lovers. A native of an ancient Scottish family, a respected Edinburgh lawyer, he managed to gain wide fame both as a translator of German romantics, and as a collector of folk ballads, and as a poet, the author of brilliant stylizations written, in his words, "in imitation of ancient songs that were once sung by minstrels to the sound of harps" [9, p. 5].
The task of a historical novelist, according to Scott, is to find a living soul behind the idiosyncrasies of different cultures, which suffers, strives for justice, for the delights of a better life for a person. This "living soul" of a person can arouse our sympathy only if it appears before us in all its national, cultural and historical originality. A historical novel should instill in the modern reader sympathy for the whole of humanity, a sense of solidarity with all the peoples who have passed through their difficult historical path to us, and evoke sympathy for the broad democratic masses.
According to Walter Scott, a historical novel should cover history more fully than a scientific and historical study, because it should fill the dry chronology with psychological content, passions and "thoughts" of people who create history, individuals as well as a large flow of people. In order to solve this problem, a historical novel must, along with various political events, depict the private life of private people, combine broad political action and love intrigue, real historical persons and fictional persons.
Walter Scott was born on August 15, 1771 in Edinburgh to Walter Scott, an official of one of the offices of the Scottish capital, and Anne Scott, the daughter of Dr. Rotherford, professor of medicine at the University of Edinburgh. The baby was born weak, but the nurse nursed him, and until her death she loved to remember how her "little boy" grew into a " great gentleman."
Both at the Edinburgh School and at the university, Walter studied only those subjects that he liked. From a young age, the future poet and novelist loved to tell stories about castles and knights that he invented.
The first poems of Walter Scott were the poems "The Storm" and "The Eruption of Mount Etna", as well as the poem"Guiscard and Matilda". As a result, Walter Scott was elected to several literary societies, where he even gained the friendship of many writers.
In 1792, Walter Scott received the title of lawyer. And the first poetic work that attracted serious attention was his translation of Burger's ballad "Lenore". Having tasted success, Walter Scott set about translating Burger's second poem, " The Wild Hunter." And he translated it even better than the first one. Both poems were published in 1796.
In 1797, after the end of the court session, the poet went to rest on the waters in Geisland, where he met Charlotte Carpenter, a French woman by birth, who later became his wife. They married the same year and moved into Scott's parents ' home in George Square. A year later, his wife gave him a daughter, Sophia Charlotte, and W. Scott gave readers the ballad "Midsummer's Eve", brilliantly translated by V. A. Zhukovsky. At the same time, other poems were written, although, unfortunately, they did not have such success and were weaker than "Midsummer's Day".
In 1800, Scott was elected Sheriff of Selkirkshire, which allowed him to leave the practice of law, and then move to the estate of a cousin who went to India.
Ashstyle Manor was located on the banks of the Tweed in one of the most beautiful places in England. Wonderful beautiful gardens, beautifully sprawling terraces, lots of flowers made the estate a paradise where Walter Scott lived the happiest days of his life. Surrounded by his family and busy with his favorite work, the writer created one work after another: "The Song of the Last Minstrel" (1805)," Marmion "(1808)," The Maiden of the Lake " (1810), which was reprinted 6 times in one year. Two years later, he published a fourth poem, "Rokeby", in which the strong influence of Byron's poetry is very noticeable.
In 1815, the poet published another poem "The Vision of Don Rodrigo", dedicated to the struggle of Spain with France. And in the same year he bought the Abbotsford estate, where he settled his family, and then went on his first trip to France. There he was received with all the honors befitting a famous poet, in Paris he met the Russian Emperor Alexander, and also met Blucher and Platov.
After returning to England, Walter Scott began writing a novel that he had begun writing long before the publication of The Maid of the Lake. Finally, the novel "Waverley, or sixty years ago" was published and the popularity exceeded all expectations of the writer.
In 1815, Scott's last major poem, The Lord of the Isles, was published, but it was coldly received by the public. Then Walter Scott published his second novel "Gay Mentoring" and again found himself at the top of fame. They were followed by other novels, which later made up 74 volumes of the writer's works ("The Antiquary", "Rob Roy", "Scottish Puritans", "The Avenger", "Ivanhoe", "Quentin Durward", "Woodstock", etc.)
In the summer of 1821, the writer, who received a baronet, visited London to attend the coronation of the monarch George IV.
1824 was the last happy year of Walter Scott's life, at the end of which his beloved eldest son, Walter, married Jane Jobson Lochore. After the departure of the young men, Scott suffered a lot of misfortunes. Already in January 1825, the great writer found out that he was ruined.
The last six years of his life, Walter Scott lived hard and joyless. He lost his fortune, his wife, and his friends, and was forced to wander around Europe to recuperate. His only joy at this time was his daughter Anna, who accompanied him everywhere.
In the summer days of 1832, the world's attention seemed to be drawn to the St. James's. The newspapers published daily bulletins on Scott's health, members of the reigning house inquired about the same, and the government offered to help with business if necessary. Even the nearby construction workers tried to make as little noise as possible.
By the middle of August, 1832, he was barely out of bed, and although he occasionally recognized his daughters and Lockhart, his mind was elsewhere. One minute he was the sheriff handling cases, the next he was giving Tom Purdy orders about the woods, the next he was muttering: "Hang Sir Walter!" he recited passages from the Book of Job, psalms, Stabat Mater, and Dies Dies iraeby heart.
On August 21, 1832, shortly after noon, Scott's great spirit left the baronet's mortal flesh.
But Walter's genius is so firmly etched in his native land that to this day, if you only stretch your imagination, you can see him, along with Kemp, Maida and Tom Purdy, chasing ghostly hares on the bushy hills between Tiwiot and Tweed. [17, p. 233-234].

1.3 Walter Scott's mastery of the historical novel genre

Creating a new type of historical novel, Walter Scott also discovered a special type of literary creativity, a special method of artistic thinking, which had a huge impact on the development of contemporary artistic and philosophical-historical thought. His novels were, as it were, a response to the problems posed to the European consciousness by the revolutionary era, and only this can explain the extraordinary success and popularity that accompanied his work for several decades. It was a discovery that, like any discovery, was prepared long and slowly, by the labors of generations who built a new Europe, defended it in continuous battles, and reflected on their victories and mistakes.

And Scott himself had nurtured this discovery for a long time before it was realized in his novel: he had to go through many of his youthful hobbies, reflected in translations, dramatic experiments and huge poems that brought him fame as the first poet.
When analyzing a historical novel, it was customary, first of all, to prove or reject its historical authenticity. To do this, they usually separate "truth" from "fiction": what exactly the author takes from the original documents, and what he brings his own, which is absent in these documents. But it is essentially impossible to perform such an operation on the novels of Walter Scott, because truth and fiction, history and novel form an indissoluble unity in them. It might be argued that Richard I existed, and that Wamba the fool, Gurth the swineherd, Lady Rowena, and all the others were all fictitious by the author. But the only way to find out about this was to destroy the novel and build an abstraction from its wreckage that Scott himself, as a historian and novelist, was incapable of.
Scott's contemporary critics of the old classical school were at the mercy of this abstraction. They argued that a historical novel is a complete lie, all the more dangerous because the author passes off his fictions as true history, whereas in any novel that does not claim to be historical, fiction is not hidden under the mask of a true truth. Even those who were strongly influenced by Walter Scott, such as French historians such as Augustin Thierry and his younger contemporary Jules Michelet, said so.
The critics who admired Scott said something completely different. They argued that Scott was not only a novelist, but also a historian, that in his novels both truth and fiction coexisted on equal terms, without interfering with each other. And that this was the great skill of the novelist: he "deceived" the reader, forcing him to swallow the truth that actually existed as a lie, and the lie he invented as a never-existing truth. In this way they tried to justify the very genre of the historical novel, which immediately became the leading form of modern literature.
However, neither the first nor the second interpretation had anything to do with Scott's creative method. It was the same kind of vivisection that was equivalent to killing the living organism of a Walter Scott novel, and it didn't explain the problem Scott had posed. In his novels, Scott overcame this traditional division between history and fiction, which is possible in relation to the historical novel of the pre-Walter-Scott era.
But let's follow this path: we will try to separate "truth" from "fiction", for example, in his most famous and most contested novel, Ivanhoe.
There are several historical characters in Ivanhoe, the main one being Richard I. But the things he does in the novel aren't recorded in any documents, and Scott doesn't really care. He reproduced Richard as he saw him through the original documents. By forcing Richard to visit Brother Tuck's cell and have a jolly feast, Scott was reproducing Richard's character, open to all the odds of life and in keeping with the chivalrous tradition of the "adventurer." In addition, Scott recalled old ballads with a similar motif, widely distributed not only in England and Scotland, but throughout the Afro-Eurasian world. This, too, was the truth, broader than the" true", unknown character of Richard, embodied in the fictional and" capacious " image of the novel.
It can be argued that the two huge gypsies, Jan and Madge Gordon, who served as the prototype of Meg Merrilies, are unreliable, and Meg is the truth itself, or rather, the story itself. Scott had to "think out" these two gypsies and "compose" his heroine, explaining her environment, customs and circumstances, putting historical and, therefore, human truth into her. There were both John Belfour Burleigh and Claverhouse, but history cannot tell us what reality lay behind these names. In explaining these historical shadows, Scott created living people in all the certainty of their historical life – just as the historian does when he creates or "imagines" his heroes from obscure hints of the past according to the law of sufficient reason.
Obviously, Scott's historical characters are fictional as well as non-historical ones. Documents and all sorts of information about the epoch, outside of any composition, are necessary for the novelist, but often he must refuse to impose them, which could interfere with historical creativity. For the same reasons, Scott tried to free himself from historical characters, introducing many fictional ones into his novels in order to freely search for and create the truth. A fictional character can embody more historical truth than a historical character; in order to create and, consequently, explain a fictional character, you can attract more information about moral life, everyday life, and the existence of a lot of information that is not available in documents, but completely determines the character of that era.
This is not a play on words or a translation of an artistic impression into the language of historical science. In the images created by Scott, a special, historical and at the same time artistic knowledge really took place. For Scott, as for his readers, the images he created were not fiction, but history. To discover the patterns that created this image meant to make a historical study of the era, its customs, national traditions, way of life, and social relations. By filling the image with historical content, justifying its existence by the laws of historical existence, and thereby making it historically "necessary," Scott was performing a difficult process of historical cognition, which could not have been realized if it had not been artistic cognition.
If something that is opposed to historical knowledge is considered fiction, then we must assume that there is no fiction in Scott's novels. If history is considered something that is opposed to fiction, then you will have to admit that there is no history in Scott's novels. We couldn't do either of these things, because both contradict the obvious truth. Walter Scott created a special form of knowledge or creativity, in which history and art inextricably merged. He was an artist because he wrote the truth, and a historian because he created fiction. Of course, this fusion is characteristic not only for him, but also for some other historical novelists in Europe.
However, sometimes Walter Scott himself, speaking about the origin of his novels, separated the concepts of history and art. He wanted to justify the unusual nature of the events and customs described by him, to prove the" truth " of his work, using the most serious argument at that time: a reference to the "source". He seemed to condescend to the traditional understanding of artistic creativity, using the usual vocabulary of contemporary critics. This satisfied the curiosity of the average reader, indicated the origin of the plot or its individual episode, but said nothing about the meaning of the image and the novel – the meaning that had to be looked for in the novel itself.
The nature of Walter Scott's work explains the fact that his role in the history of European culture goes far beyond the actual limits of fiction. Under his influence, a new philosophy of history and a new historiography emerged in Europe, and historical thought in general grew. The lessons of the French Revolution, which he so disliked and yet justified, have been interpreted by historians and publicists largely under the influence of his historicism. In his novels, the class struggle was shown as a historical necessity, and it was painted with such sympathy for the oppressed, and such colors that it helped to understand much in the past and present, and to find arguments for the struggle for the future. Scott's historical and social position could be defined as progressive traditionalism, which is quite consistent with the notorious Walter Scott historicism. In literature, as well as in history, Scott's historicism created new forms of type-making, composition, plotting, artistic and moral excitement.
For Scott the historian, there is no man outside the age. Ivanhoe reflected medieval chivalry with its laws, vows and ideals, Briand de Boisgilbert – the worldview and customs of the templars, created by the special position and history of the order, in Front-de-Boeuf-the psychology of a Norman baron who built his castle among the conquered people, as a fortress and a dungeon at the same time. All of Scott's characters, in their infinite versatility, express the diversity and contradictions of historical eras in deep social sections.
He usually chooses some major or minor historical event as his subject- an uprising, a civil war, a conspiracy-because, in his own words, at such moments of crisis, the contradictions that divide society are revealed with particular clarity. The fate of his characters is inextricably linked to a political event, and not just because he is in its power, like a grain of sand caught in a whirlpool. Scott's character takes part in the struggle, takes one side or another, evaluates the situation and determines his path. Even those who stand aloof from the fight and live only by their personal interests are connected with the political life of the country. Like, for example, an abbot who left the monastery and cultivated his garden, trampled by the followers of Mary Stuart ("Abbot"). In their passivity, in their isolation from everything around them, in their deliberate alienation from the epoch, they are nevertheless created by it, because it forces them to disconnect from reality and act this way, and not otherwise.
Each of Scott's characters, whether he invades an era like a violently active force or retreats into seclusion like a snail in its shell, retains a point of view, a moral freedom, without which Scott could not imagine a person. The historical determinism so deeply understood and developed by Scott in each of his novels does not destroy either freedom or, consequently, moral responsibility for what a person does and thinks. Hence Scott's struggle with misanthropy and fatalism, embodied in some of his novels. Almost all of his characters reflect on duty, seek moral truth and suffer from remorse, because, according to Scott, without a sense of duty and justice, neither political nor personal life is possible. Cromwell in Woodstock, Elspeth in The Antiquary, and Burleigh in The Puritans are the most acute expressions of this consciousness, which solves a difficult moral and political problem.
Walter Scott was looking for something new in the creation of novels to attract the reader. He was also very critical of the novels of his time. He believed that the old romances of chivalry – those venerable legends-had lost all value in the eyes of readers and had begun to be treated with disdain even during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. At the same time, as we can learn from the critical reviews of that era, Spenser's fairy-tale intricacies were taken in a more mystical and allegorical interpretation, rather than in the simple and simple meaning of a magnificent "chivalrous" performance. Drama, which soon after entered its heyday, and numerous translations from Italian short stories provided upper-class people with the entertainment that their fathers had found in the legends of Don Bellianis and The Mirror of Chivalry. The huge folios that had so recently helped grandees and royalty pass the time were now stripped of their ornaments, cut down and reduced, and sent in this form to the kitchen, nursery, or some hallway of an old-fashioned manor house.
Under Charles II., the general enthusiasm for French literature led to the spread of the most boring, plump narratives of Calprenede and Mademoiselle de Scudery, books that were a cross between chivalrous stories and a modern novel. These works have preserved from the prose of chivalry its unbearably long length and breadth, detailed descriptions of many monotonous battles, as well as unnatural and extravagant turns of events, but without those abundant signs of talent and imaginative power that often distinguish ancient novels. At the same time, they featured prominently the sensitive effusions and flat love intrigue of the modern novel, but they were not enlivened by the latter's characteristic variety of characters, faithful portrayals of feelings, or insightful views on life. These kinds of absurd fictions held their ground longer than one might have expected, simply because they were considered entertaining works and there was nothing to replace them with. Even in the days of the Spectator, the fair sex liked to retire to their boudoirs with" Clelia, "" Cleopatra, "and" Majestic Cyrus "(as this precious work was dubbed by his clumsy translator), as if they were the closest of friends. But this perverse taste began to wane at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and by the middle of it was completely replaced by a genuine interest in the works of Lesage, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, so that even the phrase "romance of chivalry", which sounded so respectable at that time for antiquaries and bibliophiles, was practically forgotten.
The concept of historical development in Scott is inextricably linked with the concept of justice and, consequently, morality. The moral meaning of events is most clearly understood by the people, the peasants, to whom no one gave a word in the course of the action. Walter Scott was a pioneer in this respect. Ordinary people express their opinions, concretely and at the same time in a broad generalization evaluate events and their meaning. The opinion of the people who suffer from social disasters and therefore have every reason to judge, Scott is especially precious. It is also expressed in the "folk" ballads that Scott composed for his novels to express the attitude of the people to the events, moral problems and necessities of the era. In Guy Mannering, the old ballad returns the estate to the rightful heir and exposes the fraudster; in The Antiquary, the ballad characterizes the feudal loyalty of a servant to his master, explaining the plot of the novel and revealing its secret. And this is also a problem of the new historiography, which is interested not so much in kings as in ordinary people, who, in fact, are the true creators of history. In this respect, the novel "Anna Geierstein"is particularly revealing.
Scott's novels begin with a political event and end with it. This is the beginning and end of a historical epoch, the boundaries and meaning of which are determined by the action itself. The concept of an epoch developed by Scott is far from the same as that which existed in "royal" historiography. For him, an epoch is a dynamic system of social contradictions and, at the same time, a solution to the historical problem that this society faced. History is a series of catastrophes that, like a saving thunderstorm, dispel the stagnant putrid atmosphere and refresh the air. This is how the antiquarian Oldbuck characterizes the French Revolution.
It was necessary to understand the causes of these conflicts and crises, as well as their results. Scott did this with a surprising depth of sociological analysis for his time. Once you know the causes of events, you can reveal the prospects of the future, and such prospects are revealed in almost every novel – in Waverley, Ivanhoe, Quentin Durward, Anna Geierstein, and especially vividly in The Puritans: 10 years after the uprising of 1679, a "bloodless war" takes place. revolution", the necessity of which was prompted by the uprising. She finds a solution to the contradictions that caused the events of the novel, and allows faithful lovers to finally enter into the desired marriage.
In each of Scott's novels, the reader eagerly anticipates the event that must happen, because the situation demands it, and concern for the fate of the hero becomes concern for the fate of the country.
The very concept of history implies a change in time, however we may understand this change. For Scott, it was a continuous progression, a struggle of contradictions, reversals, stagnations and explosions, followed by a new rush forward. Every step along the way is a conquest of a new quality, and therefore what has already passed does not look like what will be ahead, and therefore does not look like modernity.
The concept of regularity implies a certain reasonableness of each stage passed and excludes randomness in the absolute sense of the word. What might seem like an accident is only a manifestation of a pattern – this is how the problem is solved in Scott's novels.
Chance is an incomprehensible thing: it cannot be explained, it can only be stated. But the pattern is knowable and therefore must be known. This is an objective reality that does not exclude, but presupposes, reasonable human intervention in the historical process.
A person cannot create patterns at his own will, build history as he wants, despite the necessities of social development. He cannot oppose it with his own personal mind. Scott, as a historian, rejects the rationalistic method of knowing reality. A method typical of the Enlightenment era. Obviously, he drew this conclusion from the experience of the French Revolution, which, according to its opponents and supporters, did not take historical data into account during the Jacobin dictatorship and tried to create a new society in accordance with its rationally constructed theories.
Scott's novels feature many characters who have tried to impose their own ideas of personal happiness, the public good, and justice on history, society, and individuals. They all make mistakes, fail, and repent bitterly. These are his heroes: Norna in "The Pirate", Alberic Mortemard in "The Talisman", Christian in "Peveril Peak", Touchwood in "St. Ronan Waters" and many others. It is necessary to act in accordance with the requirements of the epoch and other, more specific laws of the given environment or moment, and then this action will be successful and will bear fruit. Examples include Meg Merilise in Guy Mannering and Saladin in Talisman.
But the system of causes that determine the events of an epoch changes with each epoch, and therefore the historian-novelist must guess the mystery of this epoch, the system of laws operating in it. He must reject the absolute truth of the rationalists and accept the relative truths created by the epoch. He must put himself in the place of his heroes, assimilate the feelings and ideas of each, otherwise the actions of individuals, as well as the resultant epoch, will be incomprehensible and seem ridiculous.
The relativity of truth, its inconsistency, is expressed in every novel by Scott. Without this, there is no empathy for the characters, and at the same time there is no novel of the type that Scott created. In Rob Roy's conversation with his rich relative and the judge, two completely different minds appear, and we understand both and sympathize with both. Rebekah and Ivanhoe have different views on the battle of Torquilstone, and we heartily agree with each of them. Although at the same time, the opinions of the other seem insane to each of them. We understand Burleigh, Claverhouse, and Morton; Tomkins, a crook who is absolutely sure that he is right, and Cromwell, a political figure who is analyzing his conscience ("Woodstock").
This familiarization does not exclude the assessment of the character that the author has reincarnated into, but this assessment is not absolute either: it takes place within the depicted epoch, in a system of circumstances outside of which nothing could be understood or appreciated.
But if the reader and the author themselves can be reincarnated as their heroes, it is only because in all the diversity of epochs, temperaments and consciousnesses there is something permanent, some human constants-passions, as Walter Scott says, and moral feeling. By emphasizing these constants, Scott asserts a unity of humanity that triumphs over all differences of age, class, and circumstance. And this leads him, who has so thoroughly understood the psychology of classes in the context of centuries, to believe that:
- class limitations and class contradictions are historical categoriesthat can be overcome in the course of historical development.
- class interests may give way to the common interest of the whole society.
It seemed to him that this could happen under a fair social system. Anna Geierstein, one of his last novels, depicts this idyllic state of society-pastoral Switzerland, in which there are no classes, because the former feudal lords abandoned their privileges, began to graze flocks and fight only for the defense of the country. But the prospects shown at the end of the novel are threatening.
In most cases, marriages between representatives of two estates, two classes, two political parties, and two nations are an anticipation of this future conflict-free unity. Such marriages occur in many of Scott's novels, in different historical settings and in different plans. Their historical meaning can be particularly clearly revealed in "The Puritans", "Peveril Peake", "Ivanhoe", "Quentin Durward", "The Monastery", "The Abbot".
This idea or dream, which resembles Fourier's utopia, is always present in Scott's imagination and work, and the happy endings of his novels should have indicated the possibility of an indefinite solution to this problem, which attracted such attention already in the early nineteenth century.
So the artistic work of the "Scottish wizard" turns out to be a historical study and philosophy of history, the poetics of his novel is a historiographical system, fiction is true and truth is fiction. In the further development of fiction and historical science, we can find confirmation of this seemingly paradoxical unity. Authors of historical novels and novels from modern life adopted Scott's method and translated it into a plan for new tasks set by the new era. Along with Scott's acceptance and assimilation, overcoming him also began, but this was a necessary form of his influence. Those who accepted and overcame owed him much, and above all, an understanding of society as a unity of contradictions and as a constantly evolving system of laws.
When Balzac, who is one of those who opened a new era in the history of the novel, claimed that he was not a novelist, but only a modern historian, a secretary of the society who writes under his dictation, he only repeated what Walter Scott said about himself.
For Pushkin, the "main charm" of Scott's novels was that he introduced us to the past in a "modern" way, i.e., using the method used by the creators of new literature.
Stendhal, who resisted Scott and constantly turned to him for help, called him "our father"in his letters to Balzac.
These words seemed neither an exaggeration nor an empty compliment to those who entered the literary field in the first half of the nineteenth century. This was the truth for them.
Section 2. Innovating the Creative method of Walter Scott

2.1 Walter Scott is the founder of the historical novel in its modern sense

Walter Scott is the founder of the historical novel in its modern sense. His innovation in the literature of the 19th century was that he developed the principles of the historical method. And this method made it possible to create fascinating novels that were freed from excessive archaization of the language and at the same time fully convey the originality and recognizable imprint of the described era. What was the historical method of Walter Scott?
N. Ya. Dyakonova in the book "English Romanticism: Problems of Aesthetics" writes: "Based on the specific significance of history for the development of literature, as well as the subject of literature – human relations, Scott formulates the tasks of the historical novel. Scott believed that the historicism of the novel consists in relying on authentic facts, how "people of past centuries lived, thought, and felt, why they did this and not otherwise under the pressure of circumstances and political passions" [12, p. 76].
The researcher of Scott's work, the Soviet critic B. Reizov, in his book" The Work of Walter Scott “(chapter” The Theory of the Historical Novel"), notes that Scott created the principles of a new historiography:"...the idea of universal unity made Scott not only an artist, but also a historian and created the basis for historicism of the twentieth century"[20, p.281].
W. Scott's innovation was as follows. To create a true historical novel, according to W. Scott, you need to accurately imagine the private life of that era, its "mores". The history of morals, from his point of view, is the history of culture, the history of public consciousness. Secondly, as B. Reizov writes, in Scott's novels, perhaps, for the first time in European literature, a people appeared on the scene: not individual more or less outstanding personalities of "simple rank", but whole groups, crowds of people... his people are a real human collective, moving, thinking, doubting, united by common interests. interests and passions, capable of action due to its own natural reaction to events " [19, p. 23].
Further, " Walter Scott has expanded the boundaries of the novel in an extraordinary way. Never before has a novel covered so many types, classes, classes, and events. To contain the life of the whole country in one narrative, to depict private destinies against the background of social catastrophes, to weave the life of an ordinary average person with events of national importance meant to create a whole philosophy of history, imbued with the idea of the unity of the historical process, of the indissoluble connection of private interests with the interests of the entire human collective" [19, p.24].
Fourth, W. Scott artistically combined historical truth with fiction, explaining the validity of such a combination by saying that "the most important human passions in all their manifestations, as well as the sources that feed them, are common to all classes, states, countries and epochs; hence, it follows with invariability that although this state of society affects the individual, it is necessary to understand that the most important human passions despite the opinions, ways of thinking, and actions of people, these latter are essentially extremely similar to each other… Therefore, their feelings and passions are similar in nature and intensity to ours. And when the author starts a novel... it turns out that the material that he has at his disposal, both linguistic and historical-everyday, belongs to the present as much as to the epoch chosen by him for presentation" [8, p.27]. Scott's focus was on the impact on a person of their immediate environment and distant past. As the English researcher notes, a sense of mutual dependence of human lives, their complex interweavings permeates Scott's novels. Scott saw a person as a focus of intersecting interactions, regardless of their own will, their words, actions, prejudices, gestures betray the nationality, religion and traditions that made them what they are. The task of a historical novelist, according to the writer, was to find the living soul of a suffering person, thirsting for justice, seeking a better life behind the originality of different cultures " [19, p. 26]."Both the disclosure of the human essence in the diversity of its temporal and national conditionality, and the reconstruction of the character and appearance of the people as a whole, formed from the interaction of national identity and psychological characteristics of individuals and the masses [5, p.81].
Balzac, who called Scott his teacher and himself his imitator, saw the main thing in Scott's creative style as the writer's attention to depicting not so much events as the spirit and mores of the era. "Scott," he wrote, "never chose a major event as the subject of a book, but he carefully explained its reasons, drawing the spirit and mores of the era, keeping in the thick of public life, instead of climbing into the high realm of big political facts" [3, p.295]. It was this circumstance that provided expressiveness and value to his books and served as the reason for his extraordinary popularity.
Scott sees the main crime of novelists in "violating historical truth... combining crinolines and narrow dresses, huge wigs and powdered hair in a common dance" [21, pp. 96-97].
In one of the few sharply negative and coldly ironic reviews of Scott, Godwin's Life of Chaucer is rejected, because the author is not concerned with the truth, not with what actually happened, but with what could or should have happened in accordance with his conjectures. Although Godwin's novels are ostensibly based on a true story, his knights speak the language of his so-called philosophy, in complete disagreement with the age and themselves. Scott considers the use of artistic images to illustrate abstract ideas unworthy of a novelist, who must avoid with equal care two dangers: insufficient objectivity, especially when describing people who do not arouse his sympathy, and excessive objectivity, followed by a loss of moral evaluation.
From this view of the novelist's task , three important features of W. Scott's creative historical method follow:
a) depiction of historical events through the perception of a private fictional character leading the love affair of the novel and thereby maintaining historical accuracy while preserving the obligatory romantic intrigue. Comparing Shakespeare's method of depicting historical events with Scott's, D. M. Urnov and N. Ya. Diakonova noted the change in proportions in the arrangement of real and fictitious figures as significant differences. If Shakespeare has historical characters in the foreground, then Scotthas the foreground and most of the narrative is occupied by characters that he himself created, while historical figures fade into the background, become episodic;
b) changing the relationship between tradition and fiction, creating a historical background by fictional characters who are extremely typical of the depicted era and country and in this respect are historical. If Shakespeare initially had a tradition that forced his authority to believe what was depicted in the play, thenScott, on the contrary, unfolded the chronicle as if from the other end, starting with the pages of private, little-known and fictional. He verifies rather than confirms the traditions...Walter Scott himself, independently, created the canvas, presenting traditional figures anew, in the "home image" that Pushkin so accurately defined and highly appreciated in his method;
c) innovation of the artistic language. After the failure to publish Queenhoo Hall, Scott, according to I. Shaitanov, begins to understand that before him, novelists took the reader somewhere in the past, either illusory, like the atmosphere of fear and fatal passions in a "Gothic" novel, or furnished with fake pettiness, like in the novel"antique". The main thing seemed to be to create a picture of the past in contrast to the present. Scott decides to do exactly the opposite. It rejects the excessive archaization of language, but uses the language of its epoch, in other words, it offers what in the twentieth century will be called the modernization of history. Scott himself explains it this way: "In order to arouse at least some interest in the reader, it is necessary to present your chosen topic in the language and manner of the era in which you live" [8, p.25].
A historical novel for Walter Scott is not a novel (i.e., according to his own definition, "a narrative in which events do not contradict the usual course of things in human life and the current state of society"), but a romance – "such a fictional narrative, the interest of which is based on miraculous and extraordinary incidents" [12, p 72]; in other words, not a mixture of" truth "and" fiction", but pure fiction based only on history, and therefore, from the point of view of the romantic,"truth in the highest sense".
A historical novel, according to Walter Scott, should reproduce history more fully than a scientific and historical study, because it should fill dry archeology with psychological content, passions and "opinions" of people who create history. That is why many people call his novels "living pictures", creating a spatial, static, generalizing image of the epoch, as if it were a frozen set of elements. For example, in "Ivanhoe" creates a picture not of a specific period of English history, but of the entire English Middle Ages, as it is remembered by the XIX century. And so Scott, by his own admission, "mixed up the mores of two or three centuries and attributed to the reign of Richard I phenomena that took place either much earlier or much later than the time depicted" [8, p. 29]. Speaking about the literary roots of Scott, B. G. Reizov mentions that the decisive influence on the formation of Scott was exerted by the English culture of the XVIII century: the realistic novel, sentimental poetry, drama and comedy. Similarly, the literary movement of the end of the century, which manifested itself in the revival of interest in folk art and Gothic, in old poets, in the precepts of classical poetry, formulated by Edward Jung in his treatise "On Original Creativity" (1759). However, having borrowed a lot from this heritage, and, in particular, the "Gothic" novel, Walter Scott slightly altered these traditions. Thus, B. Reizov notes that the"hero-director"and"deep plot", which in the" Gothic " novel aroused interest or fear, serve other purposes in Scott and acquire philosophical and historical significance. In this respect, Scott is much closer to Goethe, who ... gave his hero invisible patrons, secretly guiding his fate from behind the scenes, in order to educate him for a deeper understanding of life " [19, p. 36].
It is also important that in Scott, as B. G. Reizov notes, " in one way or another, private life is determined by the fate of states and peoples. Such an understanding of the novel requires a variety of actors and a broad social background. It also requires a subtle and complex plot that connects all this mass of people and events into a single and very diverse action." [19, p. 37] And this action reveals a certain influence of drama: in comparison with the literary norm of that time, it greatly increases the share of dialogues, which become the most priority means for the writer of socio-psychological and emotional characteristics of characters, explaining their relationships, starting and resolving conflicts. His characters, as many critics point out, are not objects of description and analysis, but subjects of action, revealing themselves in their own words and actions, in a dramatic clash of passions. Extremely complex in the richness of action and the number of characters, Scott's novels, with all the abundance of details and a variety of interests, are still extremely simple. There is nothing random about them – everything is subordinated to the main event, everything is strictly centralized, included in a single logical flow of action development [19, p. 37].
But. Anikst in "History of English Literature" gives the following classification of historical novels by W. Scott:
1) historical novels from Scotland's past,
2) novels from the history of England.
At the same time, the spatial classification completely coincides with the temporal one. And if the first cycle tells about recent events, the second-about more distant in time.
Scott's popularity and fame, which he experienced during his lifetime, somewhat faded after his death in the 30s, when interest in history plummeted. However, at the same time, as noted in. Ivasheva, "if the popularity of the historical novel began to wane, then at the same time began an imperceptible, but extremely intensive introduction of the Scott method, the impact on the representatives of the emerging new realism of the principles of artistic architectonics, on which the Scott novel was built" [15, p. 30]

2.2 Analysis of the historical work of Walter Scott "Ivanhoe"

Ivanhoe (1819) is Scott's first novel about England. The novel "Ivanhoe" is one of the best works of Walter Scott. This novel was created almost two hundred years ago, and the events described in it took place in the XII century. However, with all this, Ivanhoe is still of great interest to readers in many countries of the world. The novel is written with great artistic skill, but the reason for its success lies not only in this, it introduces us to history, helps us understand the peculiarities of life and morals of people in times far from us.
The plot of this novel dates back almost to the very beginning of English history, when the English nation was just beginning to form as a single people, and the difference between the native Anglo-Saxon population and the so-called alien conquerors, the Normans, was very noticeable. "At other frontiers, writes D. M. Urnov,Walter Scott continues to develop the same problem – the clash of local and national, patriarchy and progress. A people oppressed by self-serving feudal lords – this is the core image of the novel, which consists of many people, including the people's advocate Robin Hood, bred under the name of Locksley. The plot itself is conditional and seems to bind the living material, which nevertheless makes its way with powerful force in episodes of popular unrest, baronial arbitrariness, and jousting tournaments " [23, p. 100].
Events shown in "Ivanhoe", take place at the end of the XII century, when England was ruled by King Richard the Lionheart. The country was at that time the center of many class and national contradictions. The conflict of the novel is reduced to the struggle of the rebellious feudal nobility, interested in preserving the political fragmentation of the country, against the royal power, which embodied the idea of a single centralized state. This conflict is very typical of the Middle Ages. King Richard the Lionheart in the novel acts as the bearer of the idea of centralized royal power, drawing his support from the people. Symbolic in this regard is the joint storming of the castle of Front de Boeuf by the king and the Robin Hood shooters. The people together with the king against the rebellious crowd of feudal lords-this is the ideological meaning of this episode.
"Here," according to A. Belsky, " the people's dream of a kind and just king, who does not shy away from communicating with ordinary people, was reflected. The historical Richard was a cruel tyrant who imposed exorbitant taxes on the people. But in this case, Scott sought to create not so much the image of a real historical person as the image of a king close to folklore traditions " [6, p. 558].
Many of the novel's images and scenes are of folklore origin. This is the image of Brother Tuck – a cheerful monk who likes to drink and eat well. This hero brings to the novel the element of folk humor and everyday comedy, and his love of life and carefree attitude to religious issues makes him akin to Shakespeare's characters.
As A. Belsky notes, "according to the testimony of Walter Scott himself, the episode of Brother Tuck's feast with the king traveling incognito is based on the plot motifs of English folk ballads" [6, p. 558-559]. Walter Scott himself refers to the publication under the heading "The King and the Hermit" in a collection of works of ancient literature, compiled by the combined efforts of Sir Egerton Bridge and Mr. Hazlewood, published in the form of a periodical called "The King and the Hermit".The British Bibliographer", reprinted by Charles Henry Hartshorn, publisher of the book "Old stories in verse, printed mainly from primary sources", 1829. It was about King Edward (judging by the character and habits, Edward IV). The very name Ivanhoe was suggested to the author by an old poem, which mentioned three estates taken from the ancestor of the famous Hampden as punishment for hitting the Black Prince with a racket, having quarreled with him during a ball game:


"Then he was taken as a punishment
Hampden has a number of estates:
Tring, Wing, Ivanhoe. He was glad
To be saved at the cost of such losses" [21, p. 16].


This name, as Scott admits, "corresponded to the author's intention in two respects: first, it sounds in the Old English way; secondly, it does not contain any indications of the nature of the work" [21, p.16-17]. And Scott, as we know from his own words, was against "exciting" titles [21, p. 17].
The monstrous name of the Baron Front de Boeuf was suggested by the Auchinleck manuscript, which gives "the names of a whole horde of Norman barons" [21, p.17]. Plot "Ivanhoe" is largely driven by the feud between King Richard's confidant Knight Ivanhoe and the sinister templar Brian de Boisgilbert. An important role in the development of the plot is also played by the episode of the capture of Cedric Sachs and his companions by the soldiers of de Bracy and Boisgilbert. Finally, the attack of Robin Hood's riflemen on Torquilston, the castle of Fronde de Boeuf, is motivated by their desire to free the prisoners. It can be seen that the events shown by Scott, seemingly of a private nature, reflect conflicts of a historical scale.
The plot of the novel is Rebekah's unacknowledged love for Ivanhoe, not the Ivanhoe-Rowan love conflict. The latter is pale, anemic, and conventional, while the real heroine of the novel is the daughter of a Jewish moneylender.
Scott is faithful to the objective facts of history, showing the persecution of a Jew in the Middle Ages, even by a socially humiliated Saxon jester. But with all the content of his novel, he condemns racial inequality, national hatred of the oppressed people. It is characteristic that the Jew Isaac is hounded and teased by Prince John, who does not hesitate to borrow money from him, and the Jew is defended by Knight Ivanhoe – a supporter of Richard, a man who has the author behind him. It is significant that the feelings and will of Rebekah are raped by the templar knight Boisgilbert, and the crippled peasant Higt stands up for Rebekah. The author sympathizes with these people.
Scott's Isaac is a class character, not a race character. He is a moneylender and his usury is in the foreground. It is true that he has a comic role to play, but this comedy recedes into the background in the scenes where the suffering of Isaac the father is depicted, and here Scott's characteristic artistic truthfulness is shown.
P evekka is poetized in the novel and placed in the center of the narrative. Her life, her adventures, her love, which is unacceptable from the point of view of medieval morality, her generosity and impulse objectively form the core of the novel. Her physical attractiveness is combined with moral: the Jew is gentle, generous, sympathetic to human grief, remembers the good and sows the good herself, she is human in the best sense of the word.
It embodies the best features of the people and, above all, resilience in the struggle of life. Rebekah is strong, brave, has a strong will and strength of character, is ready to die-so she values her human dignity, honor, and this saves her in a terrible moment of conversation with the templar.
Some individualization of character, more vivid in comparison with other "heroes" of Scott's novels, is due to the fact that the image of Rebekah is drawn by the author as a tragic image. The misfortune of a girl is that she loves without being loved, and is loved without loving. In the first case, it is Ivanhoe, in the second-the knight of the temple of Boisgilbert. The compositional structure of the novel itself is also characteristic, in which, as a rule, a meeting with the unloved Brian follows after a meeting with a loved one. And this allows the author to reveal some new features of the psychological portrait of the heroine every time.
Scott loves and poetizes the image of Rebekah-contrasting her with the equally colorful and romanticized person with demonic passions of the templar Brian.
The crusader, obsessed with a love obsession, in anguish is ready to sell both himself and the faith of his fathers. Rebekah always and consistently preserves her human and national dignity, declaring that no threats and even the threat of death will make her go against her conscience and betray the faith of her fathers.
The humanistic content of the novel, the sobriety of Scott's political worldview is also evident in the depiction of knights and chivalry. Scott lovingly resorts to heraldry, gives an idea of knightly etiquette, traditions, in a word, consciously recreates all the necessary external flavor of the era, but never losing the ability to make a sober logical assessment of what is happening.
"Ivanhoe" was a great success when it first appeared, and it may be said that it gave the author the right to prescribe his own laws, since henceforth he is allowed to depict both England and Scotland in the works he creates.
The image of a beautiful Jewish woman aroused the sympathy of some readers, who accused the author of determining the fate of his characters, he intended Wilfred's hand not to Rebekah, but to the less attractive Rowena. But, not to mention the fact that the prejudices of that era made such a marriage almost impossible, the author allows himself to note in passing that temporary well-being does not elevate, but humiliates people who are filled with true virtue and high nobility. The reader of novels is the younger generation, and it would be too dangerous to teach them the fatal doctrine that purity of conduct and principle is naturally consistent with, or invariably rewarded by, the gratification of our passions or the fulfillment of our desires. In a word, if a virtuous and self-sacrificing nature is deprived of worldly goods, power, and position in society, if it does not fall to its share to satisfy a sudden and unhappy passion, such as that of Rebekah for Ivanhoe, then the reader must be able to say that virtue truly has a special reward. After all, the contemplation of the great picture of life shows that self-denial and the sacrifice of one's passions in the name of duty are rarely rewarded, and that the inner consciousness of fulfilling one's duties gives one a real reward — a peace of mind that no one can take away or give. [21, p. 6]
Conclusion

The historical novel is, without any exaggeration, one of the most striking literary genres, since a retrospective of the past in the writer's imagination makes up for the lack of imagination and imagination of a professional historian. If a professional historian gives a documentary description, sometimes very boring for a wide range of readers, then the writer, by his efforts, imagination, turning to documentary historical subjects, helps, perhaps even better, to penetrate deeper into the innermost secrets of documentary existence, even saturating it with his imagination, which often often diverges from real history.

Strictly speaking, historical novels existed even before W. Scott, but only he managed to avoid "ethnographic" portrayals of the past, managed to get in direct contact, or, in Pushkin's words, to present the past tense in a "domestic way". By making extensive use of plot moves and narrative techniques borrowed from both the Gothic novel with its castles, kidnappings, and fateful mysteries, as well as from a family biographical novel like Fielding's Tom Jones, he made them work on completely different tasks. The adventure, the mystery, the love affair ceased to be independent – woven into a broad historical background, they began to play the role of bridges between fiction and document, between the fictional hero and the historical hero; they became a means for recreating the spirit of the era, and not just its customs and customs. This is how special characters, themes, and conflicts emerged, as if marked by a personal Walter Scott brand, and how a special model of the novel emerged-and for a time superseded all others – precisely defined by Pushkin's formula: "a historical epoch developed in a fictional narrative." [9, p. 7].
By creating a historical novel, Walter Scott established the laws of a new genre and brilliantly put them into practice. Even family and domestic conflicts he linked with the fate of the nation and the state, with the development of public life. Scott's work significantly influenced European and American literature. It was Scott who enriched the nineteenth-century social novel with the principle of a historical approach to events. In many European countries, his works have formed the basis of a national historical novel.
What the outstanding French writer called the assessment of the people is reflected in folk ballads, legends and anecdotes passed down from generation to generation and merged into the image of the hero and the time, the creator of which is the people. Without a doubt, the presence of fiction is obvious here. But this is fiction, prompted by the logic of character development, based on the strictest sense of proportion of the many-faced author, who is both the creator and the judge.
Based on the work I have done, the following conclusion can be drawn: the innovative nature of the historical novel by Walter Scott is indisputable.
We can distinguish the following features of the creative method of Walter Scott as an innovator in the field of historical romanticism:
1) the composition of Scott's historical novel reflects the writer's understanding of the historical process: basically, the fates of his characters are closely connected with some major historical event (revolution, rebellion, rebellion), the image of which occupies a central place in the work;
2) depiction of historical events through the perception of a private fictional character leading the love affair of the novel and thereby maintaining historical accuracy while preserving the obligatory romantic intrigue;
3) changing the relationship between tradition and fiction, creating a historical background with fictional characters who are extremely typical of the depicted era and country and are historical in this regard;
4) innovations in the literary language (Scott refuses to over-archaize the language, but uses the language of his era);
5) one of the most important innovations of Scott's novel is the role played by the people, the masses. Scott's novel takes on democratic tendencies: we see the people bursting into its pages from all sides;
6) expanding the boundaries of the novel (covering a large number of types, estates, classes, and events).
For several decades, Walter Scott was one of the most popular writers in Europe. Novelists imitated him (or at least tried to do so), and those who failed were envious, like Stendhal [3, p. 16]. Historians saw in V. Scott the inspirer of their scientific works (in Russia, on the contrary, the historian N. M. Karamzin inspired the poet A. S. Pushkin to write historical novels and dramas), composers wrote operas on his subjects, artists-paintings. Goethe spoke enthusiastically about him, A. Pushkin called him "the Scottish magician" and put him, as we have already noted, above V. Hugo, V. G. Belinsky considered V. Scott "the great genius of our era".
We can fully agree with the opinion of A. Dolinin, who wrote that Walter Scott is undoubtedly the greatest historical genius of modern times. He was one of those flexible, mobile minds that are always ready to capture the shapes of the objects they approach; that are capable of reviving the bright, dazzling colors of places and ages that have passed in all ages. Who, so to speak, constantly look back, as if saying goodbye to familiar places, close friends and relatives. Who, in the hour of separation, strive to recall for the last time the slightest circumstances of past days, past sufferings and joys, and in fresh recollection draw the features and characters of familiar faces, read their feelings and thoughts, and in spiritual delight look even at their clothes, their habits, their oddities. Any of us who have only read the works of Walter Scott with close attention will agree that there is more true history in his novels than in the historical works of most of the philosophical writers who depicted the same era as him.
List of literature

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2. 
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4. 
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5. 
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6. 
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7. 
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8. 
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9. 
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10. 
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11. 
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12. 
    Ivasheva V. I. English realistic novel of the twentieth century in its historical sound, Moscow: Khudozhestvenny lit., 1974, p. 30.
    
13. 
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14. 
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15. 
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16. 
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17. 
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18. 
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19. 
    Reizov B. Walter Scott // Scott V. Sobr. Soch.: in 20 vols. Vol. 1. - M.-L.: State Publishing House of Art. lit., 1960. - p. 23.
    
20. 
    Reizov B. Creativity of Walter Scott. - L.: Khudozhestvenny lit., 1965. - 497 p.
    
21. 
    Scott V. Ivanhoe (translated by E. G. Beketova) // Scott V. Sobr. soch.: in 20 vols. Vol. 8. - M.-L.: Gos. Izd-vo khudozhestvennoi lit., 1962, pp. 7-553.
    
22. 
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23. 
    Urnov D. M. Walter Scott // History of World literature: In 9 vols. Vol. 6. Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1989, pp. 95-100.
    
24. 
    Shaitanov I. O. Walter Scott // Istoriya zarubezhnoi literatury XIX veka [History of foreign literature of the XIX century]. Moscow: Prosveshchenie Publ., 1991, pp. 88-103.
    

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