What Scott Scholars Can Learn from the Prefaces of Chinese Translations of Walter Scott’S Works
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Disfigurement and Disability: Walter Scott's Bodies Fiona Robertson Were I Conscious of Any Thing Peculiar in My Own Moral
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by St Mary's University Open Research Archive Disfigurement and Disability: Walter Scott’s Bodies Fiona Robertson Were I conscious of any thing peculiar in my own moral character which could render such development [a moral lesson] necessary or useful, I would as readily consent to it as I would bequeath my body to dissection if the operation could tend to point out the nature and the means of curing any peculiar malady.1 This essay considers conflicts of corporeality in Walter Scott’s works, critical reception, and cultural status, drawing on recent scholarship on the physical in the Romantic Period and on considerations of disability in modern and contemporary poetics. Although Scott scholarship has said little about the significance of disability as something reconfigured – or ‘disfigured’ – in his writings, there is an increasing interest in the importance of the body in Scott’s work. This essay offers new directions in interpretation and scholarship by opening up several distinct, though interrelated, aspects of the corporeal in Scott. It seeks to demonstrate how many areas of Scott’s writing – in poetry and prose, and in autobiography – and of Scott’s critical and cultural standing, from Lockhart’s biography to the custodianship of his library at Abbotsford, bear testimony to a legacy of disfigurement and substitution. In the ‘Memoirs’ he began at Ashestiel in April 1808, Scott described himself as having been, in late adolescence, ‘rather disfigured than disabled’ by his lameness.2 Begun at his rented house near Galashiels when he was 36, in the year in which he published his recursive poem Marmion and extended his already considerable fame as a poet, the Ashestiel ‘Memoirs’ were continued in 1810-11 (that is, still before the move to Abbotsford), were revised and augmented in 1826, and ten years later were made public as the first chapter of John Gibson Lockhart’s Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. -
The Whistler's Story Tragedy and the Enlightenment Imagination in the Eh Art of Midlothian Alan Riach
Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 33 | Issue 1 Article 24 2004 The Whistler's Story Tragedy and the Enlightenment Imagination in The eH art of Midlothian Alan Riach Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Riach, Alan (2004) "The Whistler's Story Tragedy and the Enlightenment Imagination in The eH art of Midlothian," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 33: Iss. 1. Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol33/iss1/24 This Article is brought to you by the Scottish Literature Collections at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in Scottish Literature by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Alan Riach The Whistler's Story Tragedy and the Enlightenment Imagination in The Heart ofMidlothian The Heart of Midlothian is generally considered Scott's most approach able novel. David Daiches tells us that "most critics consider [it to be] the best of Scott's works."J In his short but influential 1965 study, it is the only novel to which Thomas Crawford devotes an entire chapter, and in his 1982 revision of the same book, Crawford preserves the emphasis, citing the "extended criti cal debate" to which the novel has been subjected by Robin Mayhead, Dorothy van Ghent, Joan Pittock and David Craig.2 In Scottish Literature since 1707, Marshall Walker tellingly chooses The Heart ofMidlothian above any other of Scott's works for extended consideration before addressing the question of Scott's fluctuating appeal as a novelist, "then and now.,,3 When Ludovic Ken nedy inquired in 1969, he found that the Edinburgh City Library's nine copies of the work were all out. -
Circulation, Monuments, and the Politics of Transmission in Sir Walter Scott’S Tales of My Landlord by Kyoko Takanashi
CirCUlaTion, MonUMenTs, and THe PoliTiCs of TransMission in sir WalTer sCoTT’s TaLEs of My LandLord by kyoko TakanasHi i n the opening passage of sir Walter scott’s The Heart of Midlothian, the narrator, Peter Pattieson, asserts that the “times have changed in nothing more . than in the rapid conveyance of intelligence and communication betwixt one part of scotland and another.”1 Here, Pattieson seems to confirm the crucial role that the speed of print distribution played in romantic print culture, particularly in relation to time-sensitive reading material such as periodical publications, po- litical pamphlets, and statements by various corresponding societies.2 indeed, the rapidity of the mail-coach that enabled up-to-date com- munication seems crucial to our understanding of the romantic period as an age that became particularly cognizant of history as an ongoing process, forming, as it were, what benedict anderson characterizes as a “historically clocked, imagined community.”3 and yet the first half of Pattieson’s sentence reveals ambivalence about such change; while he admits that there has been dramatic increase in the speed of com- munication, he also asserts that “nothing more” has changed. despite the presence of “the new coach, lately established on our road,” Pat- tieson considers the village of Gandercleugh as otherwise unchanged, since it still offers him the opportunity to collect local, historical tales that will eventually be published as Tales of My Landlord (H, 14). This representation of communication infrastructures in Tales of My Landlord series does not so much confirm the thorough penetration of a national print-based imagined community as it exposes how this national infrastructure existed uneasily alongside pockets of traditional, local communities. -
Novels of Walter Scott As a Mimetic Vehicle for Portraying Historical Characters
International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) ISSN 2249-6912 Vol. 3, Issue 1, Mar 2013, 69-74 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd. NOVELS OF WALTER SCOTT AS A MIMETIC VEHICLE FOR PORTRAYING HISTORICAL CHARACTERS SHEEBA AZHAR 1 & SYED ABID ALI 2 1Assistant Professor, Department of English, College of Applied Medical Science, Hafr Al Batin University of Dammam,Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 2Lecturer, Department of English, College of Applied Medical Science, Hafr Al Batin University of Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ABSTRACT Sir Walter Scott is a great historical novelist. Scott’s knowledge of human psychology is evident to from the presentation of his characters. Scott’s assertion in the first chapter of Waverley is that “the object of my tale is more a description of men than manners.” He has thrown the force of his narrative upon the characters and passions of the actors; those passions, that are common to men in all stages of society, and which have alike agitated the human heart in all ages. His characters present their inherent traits with an unequalled eloquence. They are not made up of one or two sets of qualities. They are moulded from the substance of which human life is made and possess all its attributes. Present paper examines Sir Walter Scott’s method of characterization and point of excellence in the portrayal of various historical characters. KEYWORDS: Sir Walter Scott, Unequalled Eloquence, Waverley INTRODUCTION According to George Lukacs “what matters in the historical novel is not the re-telling of great historical events, but the poetic awakening of the people who are figured in those events” 1 It means that the responsibilities of a historical novelist are doubled as compared to those of the general novelist, in the matter of characterization, for he has to introduce characters from the past. -
Download Redgauntlet
Redgauntlet by Sir Walter Scott Redgauntlet by Sir Walter Scott * REDGAUNTLET by Sir Walter Scott, Bart. * CONTENTS. Introduction Text Letters I - XIII Chapters I - XXIII Conclusion Notes Glossary * page 1 / 806 Note: Footnotes in the printed book have been inserted in the etext in square brackets ("[]") close to the place where they were referenced by a suffix in the original text. Text in italics has been written in capital letters. There are some numbered notes at the end of the text that are referred to by their numbers with brief notes, also in square brackets, embedded in the text. * INTRODUCTION The Jacobite enthusiasm of the eighteenth century, particularly during the rebellion of 1745, afforded a theme, perhaps the finest that could be selected for fictitious composition, founded upon real or probable incident. This civil war and its remarkable events were remembered by the existing generation without any degree of the bitterness of spirit which seldom fails to attend internal dissension. The Highlanders, who formed the principal strength of Charles Edward's army, were an ancient and high-spirited race, peculiar in their habits of war and of peace, brave to romance, and exhibiting a character turning upon points more adapted to poetry than to the prose of real life. Their prince, young, valiant, patient of fatigue, and despising danger, heading his army on foot in the most toilsome marches, and page 2 / 806 defeating a regular force in three battles--all these were circumstances fascinating to the imagination, and might well be supposed to seduce young and enthusiastic minds to the cause in which they were found united, although wisdom and reason frowned upon the enterprise. -
The Quentin Durward by Sir Walter Scott
The Quentin Durward By Sir Walter Scott The Quentin Durward by Sir Walter Scott CHAPTER I: THE CONTRAST Look here upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. HAMLET The latter part of the fifteenth century prepared a train of future events that ended by raising France to that state of formidable power which has ever since been from time to time the principal object of jealousy to the other European nations. Before that period she had to struggle for her very existence with the English already possessed of her fairest provinces while the utmost exertions of her King, and the gallantry of her people, could scarcely protect the remainder from a foreign yoke. Nor was this her sole danger. The princes who possessed the grand fiefs of the crown, and, in particular, the Dukes of Burgundy and Bretagne, had come to wear their feudal bonds so lightly that they had no scruple in lifting the standard against their liege and sovereign lord, the King of France, on the slightest pretence. When at peace, they reigned as absolute princes in their own provinces; and the House of Burgundy, possessed of the district so called, together with the fairest and richest part of Flanders, was itself so wealthy, and so powerful, as to yield nothing to the crown, either in splendour or in strength. In imitation of the grand feudatories, each inferior vassal of the crown assumed as much independence as his distance from the sovereign power, the extent of his fief, or the strength of his chateau enabled him to maintain; and these petty tyrants, no longer amenable to the exercise of the law, perpetrated with impunity the wildest excesses of fantastic oppression and cruelty. -
Walter Scott
READING Walter Scott Walter Scott was a famous Scottish novelist, poet, historian and biographer. He is often considered the greatest author of historical novels. Walter Scott was born on August 15, 1771, in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father was a lawyer and his mother was the daughter of a doctor. When he was young, he liked listening to stories about Scotland’s past. He also read a lot of books. He studied at the University of Edinburgh and prepared for a career in law, but his real interest was literature. In the mid-1790s, Scott became interested in German Romanticism. He translated some books from German, for example Goethe’s play Götz von Berlichingen. In 1802–1803, he published Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, a collection of Scottish ballads. He went on to write his own poetry and published a series of long poems, starting with The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). All of these poems were best-sellers and made Scott famous. The most successful of these poems was The Lady of the Lake, published in 1810. Scott led a highly active literary and social life during these years. He also became a partner in a printing and publishing firm. The company had some financial problems and almost went bankrupt in 1813. Scott saved it, but from that time on everything he wrote was done partly to make money. In 1814, Walter Scott published a novel called Waverley. It is a historical novel about a rebellion which took place in Scotland in 1745. The book was extremely successful. Scott published it anonymously. -
The Author of Waverley, with His Various Personas, Is a Highly
Promoting Saint Ronans Well: Scotts Fiction and Scottish Community in Transition MATSUI Yuko The Author of Waverley, with his various personas, is a highly sociable and com- municative writer, as we observe in the frequent and lively exchanges between the author and his reader or characters in the conclusions of Old Mortality1816 and Redgauntlet1824 , or in the prefaces to The Abbot1820 and The Betrothed1825 , to give only a few examples. Walter Scott himself, after giving up his anonymity, seems to enjoy an intimate author-reader relationship in his prefaces and notes to the Magnum Opus edition. Meanwhile, Scott often adapts and combines more than one historical event or actual person, his sources or originals, in his attempt to recre- ate the life of a particular historical period and give historical sense to it, as books like W. S. Crocketts The Scott Originals1912 eloquently testify, and with the Porteous Riot and Helen Walker in The Heart of Midlothian1818 as one of the most obvious examples. Both of these characteristics often tend to encourage an active interaction between the real and the imagined, or their confluence, within and outwith Scott's historical fiction, perhaps most clearly shown in the development of tourism in 19th century Scotland1. In the case of Saint Ronan’s Well1824 [1823], Scotts only novel set in the 19th century, its contemporaneity seems to have allowed that kind of interaction and confluence to take its own vigorous form, sometimes involving an actual commu- nity or other authors of contemporary Scotland. Thus, we would like to examine here the ways in which Scott adapts his sources to explore his usual interest in historical change in this contemporary fiction and how it was received, particularly in terms of its effect on a local community in Scotland and in terms of its inspiration for his fellow authors, and thus reconsider the part played by Scotts fiction in imagining and pro- moting Scotland in several ways, in present and past Scotland. -
Sir Walter Scott and Cinema Page 1 of 14
The Great Uncredited: Sir Walter Scott and Cinema Page 1 of 14 • Current Issue • Back Issues • Occasional Papers • Publications • Webteque • Events • About Us • Archives The Great Uncredited: Sir Walter Scott and Cinema Tim Dolin Scott’s reputation in the film age When Sir Walter Scott died in 1832 he was the most famous novelist the world had ever known. Remarkably, Scott took up fiction only in middle age, after abandoning narrative poetry when he found himself eclipsed by Byron’s mega-celebrity and greater poetic originality and vigour. Over a twenty-year long career as a novelist he achieved phenomenal popularity and esteem, producing some twenty-five novels and collections of tales.[1] His first novel, Waverley, appeared anonymously in 1814, when he was 42 years old, and sold out six editions in its first year.[2] Having established what was then an entirely new literary form, a hybrid of history and fiction, he wrote eight further novels set in Scotland and for the most part in the eighteenth century, and transformed attitudes to Scottish culture and history in the process.[3] With the publication of Ivanhoe in 1820, where he was still identified on the title page only as “By the Author of http://www.screeningthepast.com/2012/08/the-great-uncredited-sir-walter-scott-and-ci... 12/03/2013 The Great Uncredited: Sir Walter Scott and Cinema Page 2 of 14 Waverley &c.,” Scott began to adapt his historical fiction to other places and other periods, shifting with apparent ease from medieval England to the France of Louis XI to the Palestine of the Crusades. -
Sir Walter Scott – Bringing out the Best in Us
Riach, A. (2017) Sir Walter Scott – Bringing out the best in us... National, 2017, 27 Jan. This is the author’s final accepted version. There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it. http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/161549/ Deposited on: 30 April 2018 Enlighten – Research publications by members of the University of Glasgow http://eprints.gla.ac.uk Approaching Walter Scott: Part Three Alan Riach In the final part of this series, Alan Riach looks at Scott’s late work and legacy: powerful in the 19th century but greatly diminished in the 20th century. Why? And, since the brilliant new Edinburgh edition of his works (Go to: http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/index.html) has made thorough revaluation possible, what would be good reason to read him in Scotland’s circumstances now? In the late 1820s, Scott’s health declined and in 1831, after a stroke, he travelled to Italy to try to recuperate, returning, still very ill, in 1832. As his carriage approached home, he seemed to be unconscious, but when the Eildon Hills appeared, he roused himself and according to his first biographer, John Gibson Lockhart, Scott became “greatly excited” and when he saw Abbotsford, “sprang up with a cry of delight.” Lockhart was determined to present an idealised picture of the last days of Scott, to give the impression that his characteristic decency was rewarded with a tranquil passing. Doubts have been raised about this, but Lockhart’s account is undeniably touching: “About half-past one p.m. -
Fiction-Kenilworth by Sir Walter Scott Th Cott
FICTION-KENILWORTHTH BY SIR WALTER SCOTTCOTT MRS. S. ANNIE Objectives introduce the learners historical novel as a literary form enable the learner to comprehend, analyse and appreciate English historical novels. motivate students to read Kenilworth by Walter Scott enable the students to appreciate Kenilworth Students would define a historical novel Students were able to list the characteristics of a historical novel Would have gained the background information about the novel and the author Would have gained knowledge to appreciate, comprehend and analyse the novel Cultivate an interest to read more historical novels Historical Novel A novel set in a period off hishistory and attempts to conv the spirit, manners and sociasocial conditions of a past age May deal with actual historicatorical personages, or a mixtu of fictional and historicalal chacharacters Focus on a single historicalrical eevent Attempts to portray a borderorder view of a past society in which great events are reflecreflected by their impact on the private lives of fictional indivindividuals Became popular with Sirir WalWalter Scott’s Waverley Characteristics off GreGreat Historical fiction must exhibit a high level off writiwriting Setting is a slice from history Events and characters appropriropriate to historical timeline Fictional characters merge with history-seems real Plot intertwined with real andnd ficfictitious events yet seamless At the end of the novel the readreader may want more of the sto During and after reading the reareader does research on actua historical -
Villainy in Scott╎s Fiction
Studies in English Volume 13 Article 7 1972 Villainy in Scott’s Fiction George W. Boswell University of Mississipi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/ms_studies_eng Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Boswell, George W. (1972) "Villainy in Scott’s Fiction," Studies in English: Vol. 13 , Article 7. Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/ms_studies_eng/vol13/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in English by an authorized editor of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Boswell: Villainy in Scott’s Fiction Villainy in Scott’s Fiction by George W. Boswell The natural disposition and career of Sir Walter Scott were so generally sunny that only a small handful of his many critics have seriously faulted any aspects of his character. Occasional objections have been adduced to the mystification and possible harshness of his business dealings with the Ballantynes, the maintenance of his incog nito with respect to authorship of the Waverley novels long beyond any credible reason for it, his jealousy of Robert Burns (though if existent this is certainly not very noticeable), and some of his Chester- fieldian letters to his son and heir; but these have seemed to pale into insignificance when set alongside his moral virtues. The latter in clude his industry, his openhandedness, his capacity for extensive friendships, his civil services, the generous praise of the literary pro ductions of his contemporaries, and above all the heroic stoicism with which “in his fifty-sixth year, already in uncertain health, he assumed a mountain of debt and sentenced himself to a lifetime of servi tude”1 in order to avoid bankruptcy and its stigma.