خلاصة:
This article studies Sir Walter Scott’s use of the family-as-nation trope in Ivanhoe and Anne of Geierstein. The importance of this trope in his figuration of nationhood is discerned by carrying out a close reading of the texts and placing them in their historical context,which primarily consists of a comparison with Edmund Burke andMaria Edgeworth. Consequently, his position is revealed as being between that of Burke and Edgeworth and the significance of his status as a non-English British writer is seen as a source of his opinions. His use of father-son and father(-figure)-daughter couples allows him to examine the existence of multi-lateral ethnicities as well as to express his attachment to a patriarchal view of descent and filiation, whilst simultaneously permitting hybridization through marriage to foreign women. By comparing the manner in which he uses the trope in the two novels, it is seen that his opinion on hybridization changes from one that permits men to be hybrids to one that restricts it to women. Thus Scott permits filiation to both men and women, but limits affiliation to women.
ملخص الجهاز:
ir Abstract This article studies Sir Walter Scott’s use of the family-as-nation trope in Ivanhoe and Anne of Geierstein.
His use of father-son and father(-figure)-daughter couples allows him to examine the existence of multi-lateral ethnicities as well as to express his attachment to a patriarchal view of descent and filiation, whilst simultaneously permitting hybridization through marriage to foreign women.
Like Edgeworth, Scott uses the nation-as-family trope in order to examine the relative importance of descent, miscegenation and education (or culture) in national belonging.
This particular issue, however, does not lie within the scope of this article because the Scotch Novels rather than his English and Continental ones constitute the site of his analysis, whereas this paper studies the nation-as-family trope in Ivanhoe and Anne of Geierstein which are about English and Swiss history respectively.
Thus, it reveals Scott’s opinion on international marriages and their place in national construction: miscegenation and the hybridization of blood subsequent to it are only allowed through the absorption of foreign females into a patriarchal community in which national belonging is passed down through the male line.
In fact, through Rowena’s marriage to Ivanhoe Scott is trying to foreground patriarchal descent while allowing for cultural hybridization through the male line.
This stresses Scott’s renunciation of the position he takes in Ivanhoe and his attachment to a belief in the importance of descent through the male line which, in turn, leads to his refusal of male hybridity while, at the same time, allowing foreign blood and culture to be absorbed into a bloodline through marriage to foreign women.