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SCOTT, THE FIRST WRITER OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL
Scott, a baronet and the owner of a large estate, was a conservative in politics: at elections he voted for the Tones. He was also a confirmed monarchist but his conservatism was of a peculiar kind: unlike those authors who supported the British government (Sou they, for instance), Scott never wrote any flattering poetry and never acted for personal advantage at the expense of honesty. His feeling for social justice w4s so sincere that all his life he was honest in word and deed. He called for peace and compromise. This idea was always at the back of his mind: it is felt in all his works.
First of all Scott wanted to reconcile he hostile classes, yet he did not preach meekness. He believed social harmony possible if the best representatives of all classes would unite in an active struggle agaihstevil and destroy everything that stood in the way towards peace and harmony.
This idea is expressed in the novel "Ivanhoe", in the episode when the Norman king, Richard the Lion-Hearted, together with Robin Hood and his merry men storm the castle of the Norman baron, Front-de-Boeuf, in whom all the evils of feudalism are personified; to set the Saxon thanes free. This incident shows how the allied forces of honest men, though from hostile classes, conquer evil.
The second problem that worried Sir Walter was the need to bring peace, between the Scots and the English. The oppression of the Scots under English capitalism drove them, up to the second half of the 18th century, to armed uprisings, to restore Scotland's independence. The Sciti-iish cycle of novels is devoted to finding mutual understanding between the two nations.
But Scott, the writer, contradicted Scott, the idealist. The trend of his novels was determined by the outlook of the common people. Best of all he described those characters who had been oppressed and robbed or made social outcasts and outlaws such as Robin Hood, members of persecuted Highland clans, the sisters Effie and Jennie Deans ("The Heart of Midlothian"), Hayraddin Mograbbin ("QuenUn Dur-wai-d"), the old beggar-woman Meg Merrilies ("Guy Mannering"), or the strolling mountebank Flibbertigibbet ("Kenilworth"). The fantastic episodes which appear in his works have been inspired by folklore. There is no religious mysticism in them. Their origin lies in popular beliefs. Scott delighted in the picturesque of the Middle Ages, but he did not idealize feudalism. Even if he happened to sympathize with some personages renowned in history as bearers of feudal honour, he could not help showing that historically they were doomed. When describing cruel scenes in uprisings of the people, he draws a conclusion which in his time nobody shared–the conclusion that the people are the main force in history., and that they have the right to - decide their own destiny by battle. Scott's historical approach to life was a great new contribution to world literature.
Scott was the creator of the historical genre in literature.
What is a historical novel? How can it be defined? Should it be only about actual events and real historical characters? Not necessarily. The essential thing in showing history as such in a novel is to depict personalities typical of the period and the country described. Sir Walter Scott was the first to fin this. That alone makes him immortal.
Scott constructed ail his novels after a single model: the story is locussed on the life of certain fictitious characters, usually lovers'. The hero and the heroine of the story are separated. Striving to come together, they get involved in historical events and take part in them. They meet famous historical characters who, it happens, play a decisive part in their fate. Then it is for the author to decide whether to make the end happy or unhappy.
For more than a hundred years mis pattern has been used by other writers, on the continent as well as in Britain.
Scott was a great master at painting vivid characters, wonderfully individualized and expressive, particularly when it came to the secondary characters. But Scott's greatest artistic achievement was the way he employed details from the everyday life of the epoch for the sake of social, historical and psychological characterization. Descriptions of interiors, costumes, objects of material culture became under his pen; a means of penetrating into the meaning of the events described. A feudal castle or a Highland hut, the ermine mantle of a king or a clanman's tartan, the hilt of a knight's sword or the brass collar of a serf, – they not only tell us of the historical period, but give us a psychological insight into the characters he depicts. Similar descriptions of details may be seen in the novels of the enlighteners, but there they were used mainly for comic effects, while Scott gives his descriptions a social significance.
There is a paradox in the fact that Scott, being a romanticist, brought into world literature one of the chief expressive means of realism.