Framing Scott and Waverley

1. Framing Scott and Waverley The Invention of the Historical Novel

2. Questions for Discussion • how is this novel distinct from other non-Scott novels that we have read in this class and you’ve read on your own? • (anthropological; ‘romantic’ about Scottish tradition; self-consciously specifically historical; • Similar? • (bildungsroman; growth through exposure and circulation to test and learn through experience, • like Evelina/Pamela/Joseph Andrews: a naïve protagonist whose position we more or less occupy as the reader’s seat; • like Fielding-Sterne narrator—a mature-gentleman narrator, conversational, synthetic, reflecting upon reader’s experience, and withholding information in a calculated fashion; • What is the role of sentiment and feeling? • What are the pleasures, what the dangers? • What is the effect upon the reader of the framing of the past? through the present, through a journey from ‘modern’ England to Lowlands to Highland?

3. Scotland /England / United Kingdom • 1603: James VI of Scotland is crowned James I of England • 1688: James II (Stuart) is removed from the throne by Parliament and flees into exile on the Continent • 1689: William III assumes throne within a limited monarch (the “Glorious Revolution”) • 1707: the Act Union creates the “United Kingdom”: Cross of St. Andrew + St. George = “the Union Jack” • 1715: James Stuart (son of James II) joins rebellion led from the Highlands • 1745: Charles Edward Stuart (grandson of James II) leads the last rebellion in England • 1746: The English victory in the Battle of Culloden leads to the suppression of the Highland Clans • 1745-1800: flourishing trade and learning leads to the Scottish Enlightenment (Hutchinson, Hume, Smith, Blair, etc)& the Romantic appreciation of ‘folk culture’ • 1814: Walter Scott publishes Waverley

4. Waverley and historicism: “The gradual influx of wealth, and extension of commerce, have since united to render the present people of Scotland a class of beings as different from their grandfathers as the existing English are from those of Queen Elizabeth’s time.” (Scott, Postscript to Waverley, 492) • Only with the French Revolution did Europeans now grasp the idea, "first that there is such a thing as history, that it is an uninterrupted process of changes and finally that it has a direct effect upon the life of every individual." (Lukacs, Historical Novel, 23) • History is a continuously /morphing total environment that gives definition to the human agents and circumstantial events that unfold within it. • The idea that it is culture, understood as an interdependent totality of a people’s beliefs, rituals, legends and practices, which constitutes the unique character of the nation • anthropological notes: this constructs a sympathetic, slightly nostalgic romantic, but ultimately rational modern reader (ballads, songs, sayings, …) • Waverley as an act of recuperation: the Scottish and especially the Highland rebellion might have lost in 1745, but its legends, songs and history are part of Great Britain • Katie Trumpener: Scott develops one model for the way peoples far from England and on the periphery of the British power could think of themselves as British

5. The Division of Scotland between High and Low Highlands and Lowlands Topographical map

6. The Romance of the Highlander

7. Is Waverley the first Action Adventure Novel? The pre-cursor of the American Western? • The centrality of plot over complexity of character with the engine of the plot honor and revenge • Cultural difference is expressed through style and setting and accent; • How does it relate to the American Western • exotic pre-modern pastoral setting, • the struggle between good guys and the bad guys (and gals), • the modern and the attractively archaic…

8. How does Scott tell the “epic” of the nation in a novel • Mixed text: • The central fictional story of Waverley’s travels and adventures • The framing affirms essential factuality: Title: “’tis sixty years hence”; historical anecdotes, footnotes, endnote essays, 1814 Postscript, 1829 Preface, etc. • Mixed temporality of the narrative: oscillation between 60 years ago and modern retrospective narrative • The narrator of Waverly speculates what Fergus MacIvor might have been if he had lived 60 years before, or 60 years after he did (157) • present tense narrative interwoven with retrospective modern narrative (See 183—Flora’s prophecy is confirmed): is this a formal expression of “dialogism”? • The contrasts of places, each with characteristic manners, beliefs, & legends get distilled in characters, where each personifies some aspect of the nation: • England: Sir Everard Waverley and Mrs. Rachel, Col Talbot • Lowlands: Baron and Rose Bradwardine • Highlands: Lean Bean, Fergus McIvor, Flora McIvor

9. Reading Waverley through the problem of Waverley’s (wavering) character • How is Waverley unheroic or a non hero? • What are the sources of Waverley’s naïveté? • How is Waverley’s susceptibility to others and his vacillations useful to Scott’s historical, anthropological and touristic narrative? • Waverley’s romantic capture by Flora and Fergus MacIvor 175-184 • Scott is a Scot: what is the politics of this novel? How does Waverley’s unformed character contribute to the novel’s politics? • Does Waverley grow and mature? Come to know his own mind? Become more forceful and decisive? • Scott’s solution to politics is personal: the central political transaction of the novel--Waverly's wavering loyalty to Whig England vs. Jacobite Scotland—is finally mediated by the choice of personal friendship with Colonel Talbot (over Fergus MacIvor) and a love story--Waverly's relationship shift from the dark haired Flora MacIvor to the fair haired Rose Brandwardine