03.12.2020.Literature.10D. 

Topic: Walter Scott. Ivanhoe

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Sir Walter Scott, in full Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet, (born August 15, 1771, Edinburgh, Scotland—died September 21, 1832, Abbotsford, Roxburgh, Scotland), Scottish novelist, poet, historian, and biographer who is often considered both the inventor and the greatest practitioner of the historical novel. Sir Walter Scott, in full Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet, (born August 15, 1771, Edinburgh, Scotland—died September 21, 1832, Abbotsford, Roxburgh, Scotland), Scottish novelist, poet, historian, and biographer who is often considered both the inventor and the greatest practitioner of the historical novel. Scott gathered the disparate strands of contemporary novel-writing techniques into his own hands and harnessed them to his deep interest in Scottish history and his knowledge of antiquarian lore. The technique of the omniscient narrator and the use of regional speech, localized settings, sophisticated character delineation, and romantic themes treated in a realistic manner were all combined by him into virtually a new literary form, the historical novel. His influence on other European and American novelists was immediate and profound, and though interest in some of his books declined somewhat in the 20th century, his reputation remains secure. Scott wrote articles on “Chivalry,” “Romance,” and “Drama” for Encyclopædia Britannica’s fourth edition (1801–09).

      Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 novel set in late twelfth-century England, has a claim to being the most influential novel of the entire nineteenth century. It was hugely popular, and remains so, with such figures as Tony Blair and Ho Chi Minh both declaring it their favourite novel. Why has Ivanhoe endured, and why did Scott write it? Ivanhoe is set in England in the 1190s, over a century after the Norman Conquest which saw William the Conqueror seize the English throne. A wealthy nobleman named Cedric, who is intent on restoring a Saxon to the throne, plans to wed Rowena, a beautiful young woman who is his ward, to the Saxon Athelstane of Coningsburgh. There’s just one small problem: Rowena has fallen in love with Cedric’s son, Wilfred of Ivanhoe. To get him out of the way so Rowena will marry Athelstane, Cedric banishes his own son from the kingdom. Ivanhoe (as Wilfred is known, by his title) goes to fight alongside the King, Richard the Lionheart, in the Crusades in the Holy Land. Given Scott’s interest in creating a historical narrative for his own country of Scotland, and his need to reach a wider audience with his work (the majority of his other novels are set in Scotland, rather than the English midlands), we might analyse this friction between Norman invaders and Saxon natives as an Anglicised version of a similar conflict between English invaders and native Scots, seen in many of Sir Walter Scott’s Scottish-set novels.

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