Scott and the Historical Novel

Abstract

With the historical novel of Scott, the intellectual tradition of Montesquieu and Adam Ferguson passed into the hands of its most faithful follower and perhaps its most eloquent exponent. Scott, as translator of Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen, and, intimate of Adam Ferguson’s household, was uniquely well placed to continue the development of the genre and to translate it onto a higher philosophical level. Scott did not necessarily surpass his predecessors, since no simple comparison can be made when his intentions differed considerably from theirs. Indeed, Scott himself was significantly a critical innovator in recognising the relevance of intention to evaluation; and, in the Preface to Waverley, in acknowledging the importance of the signals a writer throws out for indicating to the reader what kind of response is appropriate. His subtitle ‘Tis Sixty Years Since’ was specifically chosen to exclude the possibility of reading the novel either as an essay in the Gothic, or as a study of fashionable manners, the two principal fictional modes of the day. For Goethe and Schiller the historical was the ground to set off a tragic figure; if they focused on different sets of cultural values they did so with a great sense of urgency, commitment and partisanship.