Abstract
David B. Ruderman’s Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key and Tom Segev’s revisionary study of the ManYear period, One Palestine, Complete (in Hebrew, Yamei Kalaniot), both have enriched our understanding of relations between English Jews and the Britons among whom they lived, worked, studied, and worshiped.1 Ruderman, in particular, suggests that Jews played a variety of roles in religious debates among Anglicans and dissenters, both actively and passively.2 While it may seem untoward to suggest that a historical novel about seventeenth-century Presbyterians has implications for the later development of Zionism, I want to argue that Sir Walter Scott’s Old Mortality (1816) richly imagines a Hebrew State, if not a Jewish one. Moreover, the reception of Scott’s novel by Scottish Presbyterian readers suggests how complex, even contradictory, are the uses of “the Jews” in debates about Presbyterian dissent. As we shall see, anti-dissenting rhetoric during the Covenanting wars often identifies dissenters with both Jews and biblical Hebrews; as we shall see presently, this gesture is made on both sides of the issue, for historically, Presbyterian apologists have also invoked Jews and Hebrews in arguing for the purity of their Presbyterian faith against the corruptions of Anglicanism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See David B. Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry’s Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000),
and Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British ManYear, trans. Haim Watzman (New York: Henry Holt, 2000). A broader treatment of Anglo-Jewish history is offered by
David S. Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). A narrower purview, focused on the eighteenth century and the Romantic era, is found in
Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 1714–1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1979; reprint, with new preface, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999).
For a discussion of the English reception of Old Mortality, including a dissenting review published in The Eclectic, see Ina Ferris, The Achievement of Literary Authority: Gender, History, and the Waverley Novels (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 140–60. Excerpts from reviews, including Scott’s self-review in the Quarterly Review, are available in John O. Hayden, Scott: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 106–45.
Thomas M’Crie, A Vindication of the Scottish Covenanters: Consisting of a Review of the First Series of the “ Tales of My Landlord” (Philadelphia: James M. Campbell, 1843), 29. All subsequent references to M’Crie’s review refer to this edition and appear parenthetically in the text.
For a classic treatment of hebraic historicism and its vicissitudes, see Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982).
Sir Walter Scott, Miscellaneous Prose Works (Edinburgh: Robert Cadell, 1841), 1:43.
For a shrewd treatment of Scott’s use of dialect jokes, see Alexander Welsh, The Hero of the Waverley Novels (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963; reprint, with new essays, 1992), 186–90.
See Daniel Whitmore, “Bibliolatry and the Rule of the Word: A Study of Scott’s Old Mortality,” Philological Quarterly 65 (Spring 1986): 243–62.
See Beth Dickson, “Sir Walter Scott and the Limits of Toleration,” Scottish Literary Journal 18 (November 1991): 56.
Quoted in Michael Ragussis, Figures of Conversion: “The Jewish Question” and English National Identity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 266.
Quoted in Esther Schor, Bearing the Dead: The British Culture of Mourning from the Enlightenment to Victoria (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 215.
Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel, trans. Hannah and Stanley Mitchell (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 30–63.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2008 Sheila A. Spector
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schor, E. (2008). Scott’s Hebraic Historicism. In: Spector, S.A. (eds) British Romanticism and the Jews. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-05574-3_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-05574-3_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-60251-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-05574-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)