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Three Groups of Novels
Scott has been universally
regarded as the founder and great master of the historical novels. His
historical novels cover a long period of the time, ranging from the Middle
Ages up to the 18th century.
Scott’s historical novels fall into three groups: those
set in the background of Scottish history, from Waverly to A
Legend of Montrose; a group which takes up themes from the Middle Ages
and Reformation times, from Ivanhoe to Talisman; and his
remaining books, from Woodstock onwards. Scott’s dramatic work
include Halidon Hill (1922), Macduff’s Cross (1823), The
Doom of Devorgoil, A Melodrana (1830), and Auchindrane (1830),
which was founded on the case of Mure of Auchindrane in Pitcairn’s
Ancient Criminal Trials.
Of Scott’s works, the best known novel is Ivanhoe.
Ivanhoe, a tale of chivalry, was set in the age of Richard the
Lion-Hearted. Wilfred of Ivanhoe loves Rowena, but his father plans marry
her to Athelstane of Coningsburgh. Ivanhoe serves with King Richard in the
crusades. King’s brother John tries to usurp the throne with the help of
Norman barons. Richard appears in disguise at the tournament at Ashby de la
Zouch, where he helps Ivanhoe to defeat John’s knights. At the tournament
Sir Brian falls in love with Rebecca, a beautiful Jewess. She is taken
captive with her father Isaac, Rowena, Ivanhoe, and Cedric by the Norman
barons and imprisoned in Torquilstone. The King and his band of outlaws,
among them Robin Hood, release the prisoners. Rebecca is carried off by
Bois-Guilbert and charged of witchcraft. Ivanhoe appears as her champion,
opposing Bois-Guilbert, who dies. Rebecca, seeing Ivanhoe’s love for Rowena,
leaves England with her father. -Michael Ragussis has argued that Scott’s
Isaac the Jew and his daughter Rebecca restaged England’s medieval
persecution of Jews and criticized the barbarity of persecution and forced
conversion. In the story Rebecca is a healer and a voice of moderation
between Saxon knights and Normans.
As in Scott’s other novels, Scott portrays a range of true
representatives of the people, who are full of life. From the vivid
portraits people can perceive Scott’s affectionate understanding of the
common people in spite of his aristocratic birth and his Tory stand.
From Scott’s well-interweaving of the complex events which
were involving numerous characters in his Ivanhoe, we can see his
mastery skill in narrative art which has made his novel extremely engrossing
to different readers of different countries at different time.
Taken as a whole, Ivanhoe is a great work of art from which
we find the novelist’s truthful representation of the cruelty and inhumanity
of the feudalism and his sympathy for the people as well as his skill in
presenting vivid portraits of characters and ingenious arrangement of
events. And his language used, sometimes lyrically and sometimes
dramatically, fits the occasion every time.
His contribution to historical novels and novel
in general
Walter Scott, was a writer and poet, an innate storyteller
and master of dialogue, one of the greatest historical novelists, whose
favorite subject was his native country—Scotland. Scott wrote twenty-seven
historical novels.
Scott’s influence as a novelist was profound. He
established the form of the historical novel; and his work inspired such
writers as Bulwer-Lytton, G. Eliot, and the Brontës. In the United States
the scholar
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) said in his address in 1926, that he
learned most of Scott’s Lady of the Lake by heart at school, adding, “In
after life once it was my privilege to see the lake.” In the 1930s European
Marxist critics rediscovered Scott, and interpreted his novels in term of
historicism. The most prominent admirer of Scott was the Hungarian
philosopher and aesthetician György Lucács. Modernist taste classified Scott
to the category of subliterary or juvenile. “It is impossible to believe
that Scott lives anywhere today,” wrote
Ford Madox Ford in his The March of
Literature (1938), “he might perhaps in a doctor’s dining-room in Marseilles
or Tarascon, in a child’s nursery in Buenos Aires, or a housemaid’s pantry
on Boston Hill, or, of course, in all the sancta sanctorum of all the
professors of the universities of Goettingen and Jena. But his guilelessness
is such that it is impossible to believe that any grown man could take
seriously the adventures of Ivanhoe or Rob Roy.” However, there is also a
significant revival of critical and scholarly interest on Scott.
Scott’s historical novels paved the way for the development of realistic
novels of the 19th century. In fact, Scott’s literary career marks the
transition from Romanticism to realism in English literature of the 19th
century.
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