Ann Rigney
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199644018
- eISBN:
- 9780191738784
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199644018.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Using street-names referring to Waverley and Abbotsford as a starting point, this book explains how the work of Walter Scott (1771-1832) became an all-pervasive point of reference for cultural memory ...
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Using street-names referring to Waverley and Abbotsford as a starting point, this book explains how the work of Walter Scott (1771-1832) became an all-pervasive point of reference for cultural memory and collective identity in the nineteenth century, and why he no longer has this role. It breaks new ground in memory studies and the study of literary reception by examining the dynamics of cultural memory and the ‘social life’ of literary texts across several generations and multiple media. Attention is paid to the remediation of the Waverley novels as they travelled into painting, the theatre, and material culture, as well as to the role of ‘Scott’ as a memory site in the public sphere for a century after his death. Using a wide range of examples and supported by many illustrations, this book demonstrates how remembering Scott’s work helped shape national and transnational identities up to World War I, and contributed to the emergence of the idea of an English-speaking world encompassing Scotland, the British Empire, and the United States. It shows how Scott’s work provided an imaginative resource for creating a collective relation to the past that was compatible with widespread mobility and social change; and that he thus forged a potent alliance between memory, literature, and identity that was eminently suited to modernizing. In the process he helped prepare his own obsolescence. But if Scott’s work is now largely forgotten, his legacy continues in the widespread belief that showcasing the past is a condition for transcending it.Less
Using street-names referring to Waverley and Abbotsford as a starting point, this book explains how the work of Walter Scott (1771-1832) became an all-pervasive point of reference for cultural memory and collective identity in the nineteenth century, and why he no longer has this role. It breaks new ground in memory studies and the study of literary reception by examining the dynamics of cultural memory and the ‘social life’ of literary texts across several generations and multiple media. Attention is paid to the remediation of the Waverley novels as they travelled into painting, the theatre, and material culture, as well as to the role of ‘Scott’ as a memory site in the public sphere for a century after his death. Using a wide range of examples and supported by many illustrations, this book demonstrates how remembering Scott’s work helped shape national and transnational identities up to World War I, and contributed to the emergence of the idea of an English-speaking world encompassing Scotland, the British Empire, and the United States. It shows how Scott’s work provided an imaginative resource for creating a collective relation to the past that was compatible with widespread mobility and social change; and that he thus forged a potent alliance between memory, literature, and identity that was eminently suited to modernizing. In the process he helped prepare his own obsolescence. But if Scott’s work is now largely forgotten, his legacy continues in the widespread belief that showcasing the past is a condition for transcending it.
Murray Pittock
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199232796
- eISBN:
- 9780191716409
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199232796.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter examines Sir Walter Scott's emplacement of the structures of Enlightenment historiography in his fiction, and the tension between romance and history in his work. There is an examination ...
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This chapter examines Sir Walter Scott's emplacement of the structures of Enlightenment historiography in his fiction, and the tension between romance and history in his work. There is an examination of how his writing implements, problematizes, and transcends the models he inherits, and some consideration of how it was read and utilized differently in Continental Europe.Less
This chapter examines Sir Walter Scott's emplacement of the structures of Enlightenment historiography in his fiction, and the tension between romance and history in his work. There is an examination of how his writing implements, problematizes, and transcends the models he inherits, and some consideration of how it was read and utilized differently in Continental Europe.
Fiona Robertson
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112242
- eISBN:
- 9780191670725
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112242.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter examines the reception and interpretation of Scott's work, analysing the traditions of criticism which have worked to separate him from Gothic, and paying particular attention to the ...
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This chapter examines the reception and interpretation of Scott's work, analysing the traditions of criticism which have worked to separate him from Gothic, and paying particular attention to the metaphor of health which has dominated them. Scott always chose to present himself as a casual writer, neither jealous nor ambitious; and his texts as casual constructions, neither sustained nor complete. The image of the likeable gentleman amateur, in turn, has profoundly influenced critical estimates of his work, which have always been inclined to present him as ‘a man only extraordinary by the depth of his ordinariness’, making him unusually vulnerable to guilt by association with the ethics and aesthetics of the dominant culture. Critical discussions of the texts, too, have been dominated by appeals to the normative and quotidian, and Scott's fissured novels eased into unity and wholeness. The final section of the chapter deals in summary form with Scott's immediate contacts with Gothic novels and novelists, and identifies key issues in his critical writings on them.Less
This chapter examines the reception and interpretation of Scott's work, analysing the traditions of criticism which have worked to separate him from Gothic, and paying particular attention to the metaphor of health which has dominated them. Scott always chose to present himself as a casual writer, neither jealous nor ambitious; and his texts as casual constructions, neither sustained nor complete. The image of the likeable gentleman amateur, in turn, has profoundly influenced critical estimates of his work, which have always been inclined to present him as ‘a man only extraordinary by the depth of his ordinariness’, making him unusually vulnerable to guilt by association with the ethics and aesthetics of the dominant culture. Critical discussions of the texts, too, have been dominated by appeals to the normative and quotidian, and Scott's fissured novels eased into unity and wholeness. The final section of the chapter deals in summary form with Scott's immediate contacts with Gothic novels and novelists, and identifies key issues in his critical writings on them.
Richard Cronin
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199582532
- eISBN:
- 9780191722929
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582532.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The chapter identifies this as the period when literature finally established itself as a professional occupation rather than a gentlemanly vocation. Literary animosities were so violent in part ...
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The chapter identifies this as the period when literature finally established itself as a professional occupation rather than a gentlemanly vocation. Literary animosities were so violent in part because this was a pivotal moment in which it might still be felt that to write for money was to sacrifice any claim to gentlemanly status. This chapter investigates this as a period in which writers both investigated and exhibited class insecurities.Less
The chapter identifies this as the period when literature finally established itself as a professional occupation rather than a gentlemanly vocation. Literary animosities were so violent in part because this was a pivotal moment in which it might still be felt that to write for money was to sacrifice any claim to gentlemanly status. This chapter investigates this as a period in which writers both investigated and exhibited class insecurities.
Simon Bainbridge
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198187585
- eISBN:
- 9780191718922
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187585.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter discusses Walter Scott's picturesque romance of war. Scott was the bestselling and most popular poet of the Napoleonic wars and his metrical romances played a crucial role in mediating ...
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This chapter discusses Walter Scott's picturesque romance of war. Scott was the bestselling and most popular poet of the Napoleonic wars and his metrical romances played a crucial role in mediating conflict to a nation at war. His phenomenally successful tales of ‘Border chivalry’ transformed the imagining of war, presenting it as heroic, shaped by the codes of romance, and framed by the conventions of the picturesque. Scott's poetry were about 16th-century wars but became popular during the Napoleonic wars. With his verse, the 18th-century emphasis on war's horrors gives way to the 19th-century stress on its glory. In addressing his readers as ‘Warriors’ in his last extended verse romance in 1814, Scott completed his remasculinisation of the reader and of poetry more generally contributing to the wartime revalidation of poetry as a manly pursuit for both writer and reader.Less
This chapter discusses Walter Scott's picturesque romance of war. Scott was the bestselling and most popular poet of the Napoleonic wars and his metrical romances played a crucial role in mediating conflict to a nation at war. His phenomenally successful tales of ‘Border chivalry’ transformed the imagining of war, presenting it as heroic, shaped by the codes of romance, and framed by the conventions of the picturesque. Scott's poetry were about 16th-century wars but became popular during the Napoleonic wars. With his verse, the 18th-century emphasis on war's horrors gives way to the 19th-century stress on its glory. In addressing his readers as ‘Warriors’ in his last extended verse romance in 1814, Scott completed his remasculinisation of the reader and of poetry more generally contributing to the wartime revalidation of poetry as a manly pursuit for both writer and reader.
Fiona Robertson
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112242
- eISBN:
- 9780191670725
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112242.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book is an innovative reading of Walter Scott's Waverley Novels in the context of 18th- and 19th-century Gothic. Most critics have treated these two forms of historical narrative as though they ...
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This book is an innovative reading of Walter Scott's Waverley Novels in the context of 18th- and 19th-century Gothic. Most critics have treated these two forms of historical narrative as though they were completely unrelated, but this detailed study places Scott's work in the context of Gothic fictions from Walpole to Maturin. In so doing, the author highlights their shared techniques of narrative deferral, fantasies of origin and originality, and strategies of authenticity and authority. The book takes in the whole range of Waverley Novels, and includes analyses of such neglected works as The Fortunes of Nigel, Peveril of the Peak, and Woodstock, as well as the more frequently studied Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, and Redgauntlet. Offering fresh insight into the variety and complexity of Scott's novels, and into the traditions of criticism that have so often obscured them, this book contributes to the study of Romanticism, the novel, and to current theoretical debates concerning historical fiction and historiographic authority.Less
This book is an innovative reading of Walter Scott's Waverley Novels in the context of 18th- and 19th-century Gothic. Most critics have treated these two forms of historical narrative as though they were completely unrelated, but this detailed study places Scott's work in the context of Gothic fictions from Walpole to Maturin. In so doing, the author highlights their shared techniques of narrative deferral, fantasies of origin and originality, and strategies of authenticity and authority. The book takes in the whole range of Waverley Novels, and includes analyses of such neglected works as The Fortunes of Nigel, Peveril of the Peak, and Woodstock, as well as the more frequently studied Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, and Redgauntlet. Offering fresh insight into the variety and complexity of Scott's novels, and into the traditions of criticism that have so often obscured them, this book contributes to the study of Romanticism, the novel, and to current theoretical debates concerning historical fiction and historiographic authority.
Fiona Robertson
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112242
- eISBN:
- 9780191670725
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112242.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter turns to the frame narrative of The Monastery, and several other types of paratext in the Waverley Novels, in order to focus on the careful constructions of authenticity which, for many ...
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This chapter turns to the frame narrative of The Monastery, and several other types of paratext in the Waverley Novels, in order to focus on the careful constructions of authenticity which, for many readers, mark the difference between the Waverley Novels and Gothic. Since authenticity presupposes authority, the apparent absence of authority during the years of Scott's anonymity has recently received a great deal of attention from critics, who have analysed in detail Scott's habit of ‘keeping you all this while in the porch, and wearying you with long inductions’, as Dr Dryasdust describes it in the Prefatory Letter to Peveril of the Peak. The frame narratives of the first editions of the Waverley Novels–with their extended play between competing antiquaries, amateur historians, and gentlemen of leisure of varying degrees of dignity and trustworthiness–are now well-charted demonstrations of the complex interplay of authority and authenticity in Scott's work. It is fitting that comparable critical discrimination should be shown when considering Scott's later, more seductive, and more lastingly authoritative, authenticating voice: that is, the autobiographical voice introduced in the Magnum Opus edition, in which Scott creates an authorial persona whose pronouncements about origins and authority have been more difficult to refute than those of Peter Pattieson or Dr Jonas Dryasdust.Less
This chapter turns to the frame narrative of The Monastery, and several other types of paratext in the Waverley Novels, in order to focus on the careful constructions of authenticity which, for many readers, mark the difference between the Waverley Novels and Gothic. Since authenticity presupposes authority, the apparent absence of authority during the years of Scott's anonymity has recently received a great deal of attention from critics, who have analysed in detail Scott's habit of ‘keeping you all this while in the porch, and wearying you with long inductions’, as Dr Dryasdust describes it in the Prefatory Letter to Peveril of the Peak. The frame narratives of the first editions of the Waverley Novels–with their extended play between competing antiquaries, amateur historians, and gentlemen of leisure of varying degrees of dignity and trustworthiness–are now well-charted demonstrations of the complex interplay of authority and authenticity in Scott's work. It is fitting that comparable critical discrimination should be shown when considering Scott's later, more seductive, and more lastingly authoritative, authenticating voice: that is, the autobiographical voice introduced in the Magnum Opus edition, in which Scott creates an authorial persona whose pronouncements about origins and authority have been more difficult to refute than those of Peter Pattieson or Dr Jonas Dryasdust.
Fiona Robertson
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112242
- eISBN:
- 9780191670725
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112242.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This introductory chapter sets out the focus of the book, namely the relationship between Walter Scott's texts and the narrative strategies and conventions of late 18th- and early 19th-century ...
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This introductory chapter sets out the focus of the book, namely the relationship between Walter Scott's texts and the narrative strategies and conventions of late 18th- and early 19th-century Gothic, in order to elucidate the narrative complexities of the Waverley Novels, their interplays of different forms of narratorial and historical authority, and the special narratorial status of the ‘Author of Waverley’. It addresses, therefore, three issues: the construction and reception of a ‘Walter Scott’ who can stand detachedly on the margins of Romantic studies, to be included or not as the critical agenda dictates; the problematic status of the historical and the means of historical enquiry and authentication; and the literary transgressiveness of the Waverley Novels, defined as the narratorial and descriptive processes by which they both suggest and continually redefine generic vocabularies. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less
This introductory chapter sets out the focus of the book, namely the relationship between Walter Scott's texts and the narrative strategies and conventions of late 18th- and early 19th-century Gothic, in order to elucidate the narrative complexities of the Waverley Novels, their interplays of different forms of narratorial and historical authority, and the special narratorial status of the ‘Author of Waverley’. It addresses, therefore, three issues: the construction and reception of a ‘Walter Scott’ who can stand detachedly on the margins of Romantic studies, to be included or not as the critical agenda dictates; the problematic status of the historical and the means of historical enquiry and authentication; and the literary transgressiveness of the Waverley Novels, defined as the narratorial and descriptive processes by which they both suggest and continually redefine generic vocabularies. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
Richard Cronin
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199582532
- eISBN:
- 9780191722929
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582532.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The chapter describes the determined and flamboyant campaign in the decade after Waterloo to reassert the masculine character of the republic of letters which, many male writers seemed to believe, ...
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The chapter describes the determined and flamboyant campaign in the decade after Waterloo to reassert the masculine character of the republic of letters which, many male writers seemed to believe, had been compromised by the dominant role of women as consumers of literature and their increasingly important role as producers. Walter Scott and his followers masculinized the novel. Byron produced in Don Juan a poem that respectable women felt that they could not admit to reading, and even Keats declared that he wished to write only for men.Less
The chapter describes the determined and flamboyant campaign in the decade after Waterloo to reassert the masculine character of the republic of letters which, many male writers seemed to believe, had been compromised by the dominant role of women as consumers of literature and their increasingly important role as producers. Walter Scott and his followers masculinized the novel. Byron produced in Don Juan a poem that respectable women felt that they could not admit to reading, and even Keats declared that he wished to write only for men.
Alison Lumsden
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748641536
- eISBN:
- 9780748651610
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748641536.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This introductory chapter discusses Walter Scott and his works, which draw not only on the Scottish language, but also on many European languages. It studies the extent Scott's novels serve as a ...
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This introductory chapter discusses Walter Scott and his works, which draw not only on the Scottish language, but also on many European languages. It studies the extent Scott's novels serve as a medium of meaning created from the references to other texts and the relationship between his sources and his fictional texts. It considers Scott's involvement with the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels. It also examines the criticisms and studies on Scott's work, and outlines Scott's creativity through his concern with language.Less
This introductory chapter discusses Walter Scott and his works, which draw not only on the Scottish language, but also on many European languages. It studies the extent Scott's novels serve as a medium of meaning created from the references to other texts and the relationship between his sources and his fictional texts. It considers Scott's involvement with the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels. It also examines the criticisms and studies on Scott's work, and outlines Scott's creativity through his concern with language.
Penny Fielding
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121800
- eISBN:
- 9780191671319
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121800.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book explores the concepts of nationality and culture in the context of 19th-century Scottish fiction, through the writing of Walter Scott, James Hogg, R. L. Stevenson, and Margaret Oliphant. It ...
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This book explores the concepts of nationality and culture in the context of 19th-century Scottish fiction, through the writing of Walter Scott, James Hogg, R. L. Stevenson, and Margaret Oliphant. It describes the relationship between speech writing as a foundation of the literary construction of a particular national identity, exploring how orality and literacy are figured in 19th-century preoccupations with the definition of ‘culture’. It further examines the importance of romance revival in the ascendancy of the novel and the development of that genre across a century which saw the novel stripped of its female associations and accorded a masculine authority, touching on the sexualization of language in the discourse between women's narrative (oral) and men's narrative (written). The book's importance for literary studies lies in the investigation of some of the consequences of deconstruction. It explores how the speech/writing opposition is open to the influence of social and material forces. Focusing on the writing of Scott, Hogg, Stevenson, and Oliphant, it looks at the conflicts in narratological experiments in Scottish writing, constructions of class and gender, the effects of popular literacy, and the material condition of books as artefacts and commodities. This book offers a broad picture of the interaction of Scottish fiction and modern theoretical thinking, taking its roots from a combination of deconstruction, narrative theory, the history of orality, linguistics, and psychoanalysis.Less
This book explores the concepts of nationality and culture in the context of 19th-century Scottish fiction, through the writing of Walter Scott, James Hogg, R. L. Stevenson, and Margaret Oliphant. It describes the relationship between speech writing as a foundation of the literary construction of a particular national identity, exploring how orality and literacy are figured in 19th-century preoccupations with the definition of ‘culture’. It further examines the importance of romance revival in the ascendancy of the novel and the development of that genre across a century which saw the novel stripped of its female associations and accorded a masculine authority, touching on the sexualization of language in the discourse between women's narrative (oral) and men's narrative (written). The book's importance for literary studies lies in the investigation of some of the consequences of deconstruction. It explores how the speech/writing opposition is open to the influence of social and material forces. Focusing on the writing of Scott, Hogg, Stevenson, and Oliphant, it looks at the conflicts in narratological experiments in Scottish writing, constructions of class and gender, the effects of popular literacy, and the material condition of books as artefacts and commodities. This book offers a broad picture of the interaction of Scottish fiction and modern theoretical thinking, taking its roots from a combination of deconstruction, narrative theory, the history of orality, linguistics, and psychoanalysis.
STEVEN PARISSIEN
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780197264942
- eISBN:
- 9780191754111
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264942.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter discusses how topicality permitted top-down dirigiste appropriations of the Tudor past: George IV's use of sixteenth-century styling for his coronation, his patronage of Sir Walter ...
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This chapter discusses how topicality permitted top-down dirigiste appropriations of the Tudor past: George IV's use of sixteenth-century styling for his coronation, his patronage of Sir Walter Scott, and the mimicking of his portraits of images of Henry VIII.Less
This chapter discusses how topicality permitted top-down dirigiste appropriations of the Tudor past: George IV's use of sixteenth-century styling for his coronation, his patronage of Sir Walter Scott, and the mimicking of his portraits of images of Henry VIII.
Mary Burke
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199566464
- eISBN:
- 9780191721670
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199566464.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The opening chapter traces the various imagined ‘Easts’ from which the purported pre-Gaelic ancestors of tinkers and the Oriental antecedents of European Gypsies emerged. The Revival-era theory of ...
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The opening chapter traces the various imagined ‘Easts’ from which the purported pre-Gaelic ancestors of tinkers and the Oriental antecedents of European Gypsies emerged. The Revival-era theory of tinkers’ pre-Celtic origins drew upon medieval traditions of the vanquished but extant Oriental inhabitants of antediluvian Ireland. Additionally, early modern English classifications of rogues proto-racialized the formerly occupational category of ‘tinker’. Consequently, these exotic associations accompanied the term tinker when the spread of English in Ireland in the 19th century allowed the word to displace unethnicized Irish-language designations for peripatetic peoples. European Enlightenment scholarship linking Gypsies to a distant Indian homeland simultaneously Orientalized a British Gypsy class previously considered native. In the work of Walter Scott, this exoticized Gypsy usurped the indigenous Hiberno-Scottish ‘tinkler’ category, facilitating the perceived retreat of that figure from the whole of the British Isles to its Irish edge by the Victorian period.Less
The opening chapter traces the various imagined ‘Easts’ from which the purported pre-Gaelic ancestors of tinkers and the Oriental antecedents of European Gypsies emerged. The Revival-era theory of tinkers’ pre-Celtic origins drew upon medieval traditions of the vanquished but extant Oriental inhabitants of antediluvian Ireland. Additionally, early modern English classifications of rogues proto-racialized the formerly occupational category of ‘tinker’. Consequently, these exotic associations accompanied the term tinker when the spread of English in Ireland in the 19th century allowed the word to displace unethnicized Irish-language designations for peripatetic peoples. European Enlightenment scholarship linking Gypsies to a distant Indian homeland simultaneously Orientalized a British Gypsy class previously considered native. In the work of Walter Scott, this exoticized Gypsy usurped the indigenous Hiberno-Scottish ‘tinkler’ category, facilitating the perceived retreat of that figure from the whole of the British Isles to its Irish edge by the Victorian period.
Richard Cronin
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199582532
- eISBN:
- 9780191722929
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582532.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The chapter contends that this was the first age of print, the age when, as the New Monthly put it, print became ‘like to the air we breathe’, ‘the medium through which we receive every idea and ...
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The chapter contends that this was the first age of print, the age when, as the New Monthly put it, print became ‘like to the air we breathe’, ‘the medium through which we receive every idea and every feeling,—beyond whose influence we cannot get, and could not live’. For writers of the new generation, as for Charles Lamb, the manuscript even of a great writer never seems quite ‘determinate’: ‘print settles it’. The chapter explores the consequences of this new perception, concluding that Don Juan is the primary epic of the age of print.Less
The chapter contends that this was the first age of print, the age when, as the New Monthly put it, print became ‘like to the air we breathe’, ‘the medium through which we receive every idea and every feeling,—beyond whose influence we cannot get, and could not live’. For writers of the new generation, as for Charles Lamb, the manuscript even of a great writer never seems quite ‘determinate’: ‘print settles it’. The chapter explores the consequences of this new perception, concluding that Don Juan is the primary epic of the age of print.
Fiona Robertson
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112242
- eISBN:
- 9780191670725
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112242.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter focuses on some elements in Scott's novels which remain defiantly conventional in terms of the fashionable literature of his day, and which have largely succeeded in de-selecting ...
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This chapter focuses on some elements in Scott's novels which remain defiantly conventional in terms of the fashionable literature of his day, and which have largely succeeded in de-selecting themselves from subsequent critical scrutiny as marginal, inferior, or uninspired. Critical dissatisfaction with these apparent lapses is not obtuse, but rather too sensitive to the narrator's implied system of values. Scott is able to use Gothic conventions as variously and experimentally as he does precisely because he always leaves it open to readers to dismiss them as inauthentic. This process is especially complex in works which, like The Antiquary and The Heart of Midlothian, contain sustained parodies of sensationalist fiction and use its conventions to signal ideologies their narrators want to expose as false. The chapter presents five sample case-studies of the ways in which Gothic complicates the social, political, and historical interpretations of individual works.Less
This chapter focuses on some elements in Scott's novels which remain defiantly conventional in terms of the fashionable literature of his day, and which have largely succeeded in de-selecting themselves from subsequent critical scrutiny as marginal, inferior, or uninspired. Critical dissatisfaction with these apparent lapses is not obtuse, but rather too sensitive to the narrator's implied system of values. Scott is able to use Gothic conventions as variously and experimentally as he does precisely because he always leaves it open to readers to dismiss them as inauthentic. This process is especially complex in works which, like The Antiquary and The Heart of Midlothian, contain sustained parodies of sensationalist fiction and use its conventions to signal ideologies their narrators want to expose as false. The chapter presents five sample case-studies of the ways in which Gothic complicates the social, political, and historical interpretations of individual works.
Simon Bainbridge
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198187585
- eISBN:
- 9780191718922
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187585.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter discusses the relationship of poetry and the Peninsular War. Robert Southey showed the extent to which the unfolding events in Spain has already been imagined, and written, as romance. ...
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This chapter discusses the relationship of poetry and the Peninsular War. Robert Southey showed the extent to which the unfolding events in Spain has already been imagined, and written, as romance. Southey was not alone in responding to the war in the Peninsula as already shaped by the representations of ‘poets and romancers.’ The combination of geography and genre in the imaginative shaping of the latest stage of the war was compounded by the fashion for romance produced by the popularity of Walter Scott's poetry which coalesced with the sense of Spain as a land of romance to provide the major poetic framework for the British understanding of the war. The author also examines the poetic use of romance to shape and give meaning to the war, looking at the representational challenges this presented and at the poetic questioning and subversion of this generically inflected understanding of the conflict.Less
This chapter discusses the relationship of poetry and the Peninsular War. Robert Southey showed the extent to which the unfolding events in Spain has already been imagined, and written, as romance. Southey was not alone in responding to the war in the Peninsula as already shaped by the representations of ‘poets and romancers.’ The combination of geography and genre in the imaginative shaping of the latest stage of the war was compounded by the fashion for romance produced by the popularity of Walter Scott's poetry which coalesced with the sense of Spain as a land of romance to provide the major poetic framework for the British understanding of the war. The author also examines the poetic use of romance to shape and give meaning to the war, looking at the representational challenges this presented and at the poetic questioning and subversion of this generically inflected understanding of the conflict.
Fiona Robertson
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112242
- eISBN:
- 9780191670725
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112242.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter examines Scott's techniques of secrecy and suggestion in The Pirate, Rob Roy, and Peveril of the Peak, arguing that Scott draws on his readers' familiarity with a literature of terror ...
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This chapter examines Scott's techniques of secrecy and suggestion in The Pirate, Rob Roy, and Peveril of the Peak, arguing that Scott draws on his readers' familiarity with a literature of terror while allowing them, if they choose, to categorize it as literary and therefore secondary to the main purposes (moral and political) of his art. It also argues for a strategic and self-aware use of Gothic conventions, which are not to be equated either technically or psychologically with anything ‘repressed’ by the ‘dominant’ aesthetic of these novels.Less
This chapter examines Scott's techniques of secrecy and suggestion in The Pirate, Rob Roy, and Peveril of the Peak, arguing that Scott draws on his readers' familiarity with a literature of terror while allowing them, if they choose, to categorize it as literary and therefore secondary to the main purposes (moral and political) of his art. It also argues for a strategic and self-aware use of Gothic conventions, which are not to be equated either technically or psychologically with anything ‘repressed’ by the ‘dominant’ aesthetic of these novels.
Ayşe Çelikkol
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199769001
- eISBN:
- 9780199896943
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199769001.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter uncovers some of the earliest articulations of the tension between free trade and patriotism as it examines the novels of Walter Scott. Guy Mannering (1815) and Redgauntlet (1824) ...
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This chapter uncovers some of the earliest articulations of the tension between free trade and patriotism as it examines the novels of Walter Scott. Guy Mannering (1815) and Redgauntlet (1824) critique unrestricted commercial exchange through the figure of the smuggler. This figure is so resonant because it superposes two distinct contexts, one economic and the other literary. In early-nineteenth-century Britain, the contraband trade was political economists’ favorite trope for proving the inevitability of commodity circulation across national borders. The smuggler, however, belonged as much to romance tales as to political economy: for centuries, smugglers embellished adventure tales of unruly exploits. Scott’s novels bring the latter context to bear on the former. The detachment of fictional smugglers comes to express the interpersonal consequences of free trade: an inability to form bonds.Less
This chapter uncovers some of the earliest articulations of the tension between free trade and patriotism as it examines the novels of Walter Scott. Guy Mannering (1815) and Redgauntlet (1824) critique unrestricted commercial exchange through the figure of the smuggler. This figure is so resonant because it superposes two distinct contexts, one economic and the other literary. In early-nineteenth-century Britain, the contraband trade was political economists’ favorite trope for proving the inevitability of commodity circulation across national borders. The smuggler, however, belonged as much to romance tales as to political economy: for centuries, smugglers embellished adventure tales of unruly exploits. Scott’s novels bring the latter context to bear on the former. The detachment of fictional smugglers comes to express the interpersonal consequences of free trade: an inability to form bonds.
Andrew Lincoln
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748626069
- eISBN:
- 9780748651870
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748626069.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter introduces Walter Scott and the links between sudden political change and ideas of modernisation, liberalisation and civilisation, looking first at the issues of modernisation that ...
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This chapter introduces Walter Scott and the links between sudden political change and ideas of modernisation, liberalisation and civilisation, looking first at the issues of modernisation that emerged during and after the French Revolution. It reveals that the historical and social vision of Scott's fiction was shaped by Tory scepticism, not Tory loyalism. The chapter then studies the process of disembedding, which is influenced by Scott's Scottish identity and paternalism, and shows how he includes established social values in his fiction, along with conventional gestures and patterns of romance. It also considers the inclusive nature of Scott's historical fiction.Less
This chapter introduces Walter Scott and the links between sudden political change and ideas of modernisation, liberalisation and civilisation, looking first at the issues of modernisation that emerged during and after the French Revolution. It reveals that the historical and social vision of Scott's fiction was shaped by Tory scepticism, not Tory loyalism. The chapter then studies the process of disembedding, which is influenced by Scott's Scottish identity and paternalism, and shows how he includes established social values in his fiction, along with conventional gestures and patterns of romance. It also considers the inclusive nature of Scott's historical fiction.
Simpson Erik
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748636440
- eISBN:
- 9780748651603
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748636440.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter discusses Walter Scott and Lord Byron, who use Quentin Durward and Don Juan to visualize a type of patriotic autonomy that is available to soldiers in the company of mercenaries. These ...
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This chapter discusses Walter Scott and Lord Byron, who use Quentin Durward and Don Juan to visualize a type of patriotic autonomy that is available to soldiers in the company of mercenaries. These two heroes find ways to separate themselves from their mercenary comrades, and their stories somehow highlight Scott and Byron's opposed views of the value of local and national attachments. The chapter also explains how Durward and Don Juan strengthen their own political models with their personal presentations of love and marriage.Less
This chapter discusses Walter Scott and Lord Byron, who use Quentin Durward and Don Juan to visualize a type of patriotic autonomy that is available to soldiers in the company of mercenaries. These two heroes find ways to separate themselves from their mercenary comrades, and their stories somehow highlight Scott and Byron's opposed views of the value of local and national attachments. The chapter also explains how Durward and Don Juan strengthen their own political models with their personal presentations of love and marriage.
