چکیده:
Although Scott is usually considered a Romantic, an analysis of the sources of
his so-called Romanticism reveals it to be superficial: his thought is
profoundly influenced by that of the Scottish Enlightenment and by Neoclassical
concepts. Many of Scott’s novels were written in reaction to the Glorious
Revolution and the Act of Union, rather than the French Revolution. The Union
influenced Scottish culture throughout the 1700s. One of its results was the
development of Scottish Enlightenment historiography which forms the basis of
Scott’s systematisation of history. Scott’s plots function as a means of
examining various societies in different stages of progress. They also allow the
protagonist to learn the worth of prized Neoclassical values such as the
supremacy of reason over emotion and the importance of self-restraint and
moderation. Scott’s mediaevalism and use of exotic locations stems from the
Scottish Enlightenment interest in cultural difference. In addition, his
narratorial interjections in the narratives are not evidence of a Romantic
pre-occupation with the self, but a development of eighteenth century British
literary practice.
خلاصه ماشینی:
"Abstract Although Scott is usually considered a Romantic, an analysis of the sources of his so-called Romanticism reveals it to be superficial: his thought is profoundly influenced by that of the Scottish Enlightenment and by Neoclassical concepts.
In contrast, Scott, following the literati, sees primitive society, whether that of the Highlander in Waverley or the Anglo-Saxon in Ivanhoe, as a lower form of societal development in comparison to the stages that followed.
Consequently, the origins of Scott’s interest in different cultures are to be found in a concern common to eighteenth century European, especially Scottish, intellectuals and the cultural and political conditions that prevailed in Scotland after the Union.
The above-mentioned works therefore share a common theme with nearly all of the other Waverley Novels, not least the Scotch Novels such as Waverley, Old Mortality and Rob Roy. Scott’s fascination with the relationship between the past and the present is the source of his concern with intercultural relations, whether they be those between Highlander and Englishman or Lowlander as in Waverley and Rob Roy, fanatical covenanting Protestant and more conventional Protestant in Old Mortality or between different national cultures as in Ivanhoe and Quentin Durward.
His earlier novels, set in eighteenth and seventeenth century Scotland, analyse this It was when he had more or less exhausted this historical seam that he turned to mining the history of other nations in order to examine similar, fundamental problems."