Bloodless Revolution and the Form of the Novel

Abstract

In synthesizing the Jacobite—Enlightenment dialectic in his historical fiction Walter Scott did more than just render amusing a particularly painful historical episode. His synthesis helped to solidify the novel as a literary and a national form. In this, Scott seems to have succeeded where Godwin failed. In this chapter I present these two writers side-by-side and compare the sense of history and Enlightenment implicit in their fictions.

Perhaps no important revolution was ever bloodless

William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice