Sir Walter Scott

(1771—1832)
《艾凡赫》（ Ivanhoe ），由沃尔特 ·司各特爵士（ Sir Walter Scott ）所著，是一部历史小说，首次发表于
1819 年。这部小说以其丰富的情节、浪漫主义色彩和对中世纪英格兰的描绘而闻名。以下是《艾凡赫》的故
事情节概述：
•开场：故事开始于 12 世纪的英格兰，描述了撒克逊贵族威尔弗里德爵士（ Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe ）和他的父
亲塞德里克（ Cedric the Saxon ）之间的冲突。塞德里克希望威尔弗里德恢复撒克逊人的荣耀，但威尔弗里德
却忠于诺曼底国王理查德一世（ Richard the Lionheart ）。
•锦标赛：故事中的一个关键事件是一场锦标赛，旨在决定谁能成为阿什比城堡（ Ashby-de-la-Zouche ）的领
主。威尔弗里德化名参加，以隐藏自己的身份，因为他的父亲禁止他参加。
•被捕和营救：在锦标赛中受伤后，威尔弗里德被罗宾汉（ Robin Hood ）的一群追随者所救，并被带到罗宾
汉的秘密营地。在这里，他遇到了美丽的犹太女子丽贝卡（ Rebecca ）和她的被俘虏的父亲艾萨克（ Isaac ）。
•丽贝卡的审判：丽贝卡因被指控使用巫术而被带到诺曼底法庭受审。威尔弗里德在审判中为她辩护，尽管他
自己也是虚弱和受伤的。
•和解：随着故事的发展，撒克逊人和诺曼人之间的紧张关系逐渐缓和。威尔弗里德的父亲塞德里克开始接受
诺曼底人，而诺曼底人也学会了尊重撒克逊人的传统和价值观。
•结局：故事以国王理查德一世的归来和威尔弗里德的恢复健康而结束。威尔弗里德最终与他的爱人罗文娜
（ Rowena ）结婚，而丽贝卡则与她的爱人，一个基督教骑士，私奔。
《艾凡赫》的故事情节充满了冒险、爱情、荣誉和忠诚的主题，同时也探讨了宗教宽容和社会融合的问题。
司各特通过这部作品展示了他对中世纪英格兰的浪漫化视角，同时也对当时的社会和政治问题提出了批评。
General Introduction
• Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet FRSE FSA Scot (15 August
1771 – 21 September 1832) was a Scottish historical
novelist, poet, playwright, and historian.
• Many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature.

• Famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Old Mortality, The

Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian, and
The Bride of Lammermoor.
• Scott was an advocate, judge and legal administrator by
profession, and throughout his career combined his writing
and editing work with his daily occupation as Clerk of
Session and Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire.
• A prominent member of the Tory establishment in
Edinburgh, Scott was an active member of the Highland
Society, served a long term as President of the Royal Society
of Edinburgh (1820–32) and was a Vice President of the
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1827–1829).
• Scott's knowledge of history, and his facility with literary
technique, made him a seminal figure in the establishment of
the historical novel genre, as well as an exemplar of
European literary Romanticism.
Facts of Life
• Walter Scott was born on 15 August 1771. He was the ninth
child of Walter Scott, a Writer to the Signet and Anne
Rutherford.
• He survived a childhood bout of polio in 1773 that left him
lame, a condition that was to have a significant effect on his
life and writing.
• He was taught to read by his aunt Jenny, and learned from
her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends
that characterised much of his work.
• In October 1779 he began at the Royal High School of
Edinburgh (in High School Yards). He was now well able to
walk and explore the city and the surrounding countryside.
His reading included chivalric romances, poems, history and
travel books.
• Scott began studying classics at the University of Edinburgh
in November 1783, at the age of 12, a year or so younger
than most of his fellow students.
• In March 1786 he began an apprenticeship in his father's
office to become a Writer to the Signet.
• After completing his studies in law, he became a lawyer in
Edinburgh.
• As a result of his early polio infection, Scott had a
pronounced limp.
• He was described in 1820 as tall, well formed (except for one
ankle and foot which made him walk lamely), neither fat nor
thin, with forehead very high, nose short, upper lip long and
face rather fleshy, complexion fresh and clear, eyes very
blue, shrewd and penetrating, with hair now silvery white.
• On a trip to the Lake District with old college friends he met
Charlotte Charpentier (or Carpenter), daughter of Jean
Charpentier of Lyon in France, and ward of Lord Downshire
in Cumberland, an Episcopalian.
• After three weeks of courtship, Scott proposed and they were
married on Christmas Eve 1797 in St Mary's Church, Carlisle
(a church set up in the now destroyed nave of Carlisle
Cathedral).
• They had five children, of whom four survived by the time
of Scott's death, most baptised by an Episcopalian
clergyman.
• In 1799 he was appointed Sheriff-Depute of the County of
Selkirk, based in the Royal Burgh of Selkirk.
• In his early married days Scott had a decent living from his
earnings at the law, his salary as Sheriff-Depute, his wife's
income, some revenue from his writing, and his share of his
father's rather meagre estate.
• In 1825, a UK-wide banking crisis resulted in the collapse
of the Ballantyne printing business, of which Scott was the
only partner with a financial interest; the company's debts of
£130,000 (equivalent to £10,700,000 in 2019) caused his
very public ruin.
• Rather than declare himself bankrupt, or to accept any kind
of financial support from his many supporters and admirers
(including the king himself), he placed his house and
income in a trust belonging to his creditors, and determined
to write his way out of debt.
• Although Scott's health was failing, he undertook a grand
tour of Europe, and was welcomed and celebrated wherever
he went.
• He returned to Scotland, but in an epidemic of typhus,
became ill. At Abbotsford, Scotland, the now grand home
he had first built as a cottage, he died on 21 September
1832.
• Scott was buried in Dryburgh Abbey, where his wife had
earlier been interred. Nearby is a large statue of William
Wallace, one of Scotland's many romanticised historical
figures.
• Although Scott died owing money, his novels continued to
sell, and the debts encumbering his estate were discharged
shortly after his death.
Literary Career
• As a boy, youth, and young man, Scott was fascinated by the
oral traditions of the Scottish Borders.
• He was an obsessive collector of stories, and developed an
innovative method of recording what he heard at the feet of
local story-tellers using carvings on twigs, to avoid the
disapproval of those who believed that such stories were
neither for writing down nor for printing.
• In 1796, he published an idiosyncratic three-volume set of
collected ballads of his adopted home region, Minstrelsy of
the Scottish Border. This was the first sign from a literary
standpoint of his interest in Scottish history.
• In an innovative and astute action, he wrote and published
his first novel, Waverley, anonymously in 1814.
• Mindful of his reputation as a poet, Scott maintained the
anonymity he had begun with Waverley, publishing the
novels under the name "Author of Waverley" or as "Tales
of..." with no author.
• Among those familiar with his poetry, his identity became
an open secret, but Scott persisted in maintaining the façade,
perhaps because he thought his old-fashioned father would
disapprove of his engaging in such a trivial pursuit as novel
writing.
• During this time Scott became known by the nickname "The
Wizard of the North".
• In 1815 he was given the honour of dining with George,
Prince Regent, who wanted to meet the "Author of
Waverley".
• Ivanhoe (1819), set in 12th-century England, marked a move
away from Scott's focus on the local history of Scotland.
• Based partly on Hume's History of England and the ballad
cycle of Robin Hood, Ivanhoe was quickly translated into
many languages and inspired countless imitations and
theatrical adaptations.
General Introduction
• Ivanhoe is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, first
published in late 1819 in three volumes and subtitled A
Romance.
• At the time it was written it represented a shift by Scott
away from fairly realistic novels set in Scotland in the
comparatively recent past, to a somewhat fanciful depiction
of medieval England.
• Ivanhoe is set in 12th-century England with colourful
descriptions of a tournament, outlaws, a witch trial and
divisions between Jews and Christians.
• It has been credited for increasing interest in romance and
medievalism; John Henry Newman claimed Scott "had first
turned men's minds in the direction of the Middle Ages",
while Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin made similar
assertions of Scott's overwhelming influence over the
revival, based primarily on the publication of this novel.
• It has also had an important influence on popular perceptions
of Richard the Lionheart, King John and Robin Hood.
Composition and Sources
• By the beginning of July in 1819 at the latest, he had started
dictating his new novel Ivanhoe, again with John Ballantyne
and William Laidlaw as amanuenses.
• He was able to take up the pen himself for the second half of
the novel and completed it in early November.
• For detailed information about the middle ages Scott drew on
three works by the antiquarian Joseph Strutt.
• Horda Angel-cynnan or a Compleat View of the Manners,
Customs, Arms, Habits etc. of the Inhabitants of England
(1775–76), Dress and Habits of the People of England
(1796–99), and Sports and Pastimes of the People of
England (1801).
• Two historians gave him a solid grounding in the period:
Robert Henry with his The History of Great Britain (1771–
93), and Sharon Turner with The History of the Anglo-Saxons
from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest (1799–
1805).
• His clearest debt to an original medieval source involved the
Templar Rule, reproduced in The Theatre of Honour and
Knight-Hood (1623) translated from the French of André
Favine.
• Scott was happy to introduce details from the later middle
ages, and Chaucer was particularly helpful, as (in a different
way) was the fourteenth-century romance Richard Coeur de
Lion.
Plot Introduction
• Ivanhoe is the story of one of the remaining Anglo-Saxon noble
families at a time when the nobility in England was
overwhelmingly Norman.
• It follows the Saxon protagonist, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, who is
out of favour with his father for his allegiance to the Norman king
Richard the Lionheart.
• The story is set in 1194, after the failure of the Third Crusade,
when many of the Crusaders were still returning to their homes in
Europe.
• King Richard, who had been captured by Leopold of Austria on
his return journey to England, was believed to still be in captivity.
Plot Developement: an Outline

• Opening
• The tournament
• Capture and rescue
• Rebecca’s trial and Ivanhoe’s reconciliation
Style
• Critics of the novel have treated it as a romance intended
mainly to entertain boys.
• Ivanhoe maintains many of the elements of the Romance
genre, including the quest, a chivalric setting, and the
overthrowing of a corrupt social order to bring on a time of
happiness.
• Other critics assert that the novel creates a realistic and
vibrant story, idealising neither the past nor its main
character.
Themes
• In the latter novels, industrial society becomes the centre of
this conflict as the backward Scottish nationalists and the
"advanced" English have to arise from chaos to create unity.
• Similarly, the Normans in Ivanhoe, who represent a more
sophisticated culture, and the Saxons, who are poor,
disenfranchised, and resentful of Norman rule, band
together and begin to mould themselves into one people.

• 民族融合
• 盎克鲁撒克逊 诺曼人
• The conflict between the Saxons and Normans focuses on the
losses both groups must experience before they can be
reconciled and thus forge a united England.
• For the Saxons, this value is the final admission of the
hopelessness of the Saxon cause. The Normans must learn to
overcome the materialism and violence in their own codes of
chivalry.
• Ivanhoe and Richard represent the hope of reconciliation for
a unified future.
• Ivanhoe, though of a more noble lineage than some of the
other characters, represents a middling individual in the
medieval class system who is not exceptionally outstanding
in his abilities, as is expected of other quasi-historical
fictional characters, such as the Greek heroes.
• Critic György Lukács points to middling main characters like
Ivanhoe in Sir Walter Scott's other novels as one of the
primary reasons Scott's historical novels depart from
previous historical works, and better explore social and
cultural history.
• Ivanhoe was also remarkable in its sympathetic portrayal of
Jewish characters: Rebecca, considered by many critics the
book's real heroine, does not in the end get to marry Ivanhoe,
whom she loves, but Scott allows her to remain faithful to
her own religion, rather than having her convert to
Christianity.
• Likewise, her father, Isaac of York, a Jewish moneylender,
is shown as a victim rather than a villain.
• In Ivanhoe, which is one of Scott's Waverley novels,
religious and sectarian fanatics are the villains, while the
eponymous hero is a bystander who must weigh the
evidence and decide where to take a stand.
• Scott's positive portrayal of Judaism, which reflects his
humanity and concern for religious toleration, also
coincided with a contemporary movement for the
Emancipation of the Jews in England.
Historical Accuracy
• Modern readers are cautioned to understand that Scott's aim
was to create a compelling novel set in a historical period,
not to provide a book of history.
• There has been criticism of Scott's portrayal of the bitter
extent of the “enmity of Saxon and Norman, represented as
persisting in the days of Richard” as "unsupported by the
evidence of contemporary records that forms the basis of the
story."
• Historian E. A. Freeman criticised Scott's novel, stating its
depiction of a Saxon–Norman conflict in late twelfth-century
England was unhistorical.
• Freeman cited medieval writer Walter Map, who claimed that
tension between the Saxons and Normans had declined by the
reign of Henry I.
• Freeman also cited the late twelfth-century book Dialogus de
Scaccario by Richard FitzNeal. This book claimed that the
Saxons and Normans had so merged together through
intermarriage and cultural assimilation that (outside the
aristocracy) it was impossible to tell "one from the other."
• Finally, Freeman ended his critique of Scott by saying that
by the end of the twelfth century, the descendants of both
Saxons and Normans in England referred to themselves as
"English", not "Saxon" or "Norman".
• Indeed, some experts suggest that Scott deliberately used
Ivanhoe to illustrate his own combination of Scottish
patriotism and pro-British Unionism.
• For a writer whose early novels were prized for their
historical accuracy, Scott was remarkably loose with the
facts when he wrote Ivanhoe... But it is crucial to remember
that Ivanhoe, unlike the Waverly books, is entirely a
romance.
• It is meant to please, not to instruct, and is more an act of
imagination than one of research.
• Despite this fancifulness, however, Ivanhoe does make some
prescient historical points.
• The novel is occasionally quite critical of King Richard, who
seems to love adventure more than he loves the well-being of
his subjects.
• This criticism did not match the typical idealised, romantic
view of Richard the Lion-Hearted that was popular when
Scott wrote the book, and yet it accurately echoes the way
King Richard is often judged by historians today.
• The two Jewish characters, the moneylender Isaac of York
and his beautiful daughter Rebecca, feature as main
characters; the book was written and published during a
period of increasing struggle for the emancipation of the
Jews in England, and there are frequent references to
injustices against them.
Noteworthy Quotations
• Chapter Six:
• His doubts might have been indeed pardoned; for, except
perhaps the flying fish, there was no race existing on the
earth, in the air, or the waters, who were the object of such an
unintermitting, general, and relentless persecution as the
Jews of this period.
• Chapter Seven:
• He was comely in countenance, bulky and strong in person,
and in the flower of his age — yet inanimate in expression,
dull-eyed, heavy-browed, inactive and sluggish in all his
motions, and so slow in resolution, that the soubriquet of one
of his ancestors was conferred upon him, and he was very
generally called Athelstane the Unready.
• Chapter Ten:
• The Jews, it is well known, being as liberal in exercising the
duties of hospitality and charity among their own people, as
they were alleged to be reluctant and churlish in extending
them to those whom they termed Gentiles, and whose
treatment of them certainly merited little hospitality at their
hand.
• Chapter Seventeen:
• If he had the courage to encounter danger, he at least hated the trouble of
going to seek it; and while he agreed in the general principles laid down
by Cedric concerning the claim of the Saxons to independence, and was
still more easily convinced of his own title to reign over them when that
independence should be attained, yet when the means of asserting these
rights came to be discussed, he was still “Athelstane the Unready,” slow,
irresolute, procrastinating, and unenterprising. The warm and
impassioned exhortations of Cedric had as little effect upon his impassive
temper, as red-hot balls alighting in the water, which produce a little
sound and smoke, and are instantly extinguished.
• Chapter Twenty-three
• And here we cannot but think it necessary to offer some better proof
than the incidents of an idle tale, to vindicate the melancholy
representation of manners which has been just laid before the reader. It
is grievous to think that those valiant barons, to whose stand against the
crown the liberties of England were indebted for their existence, should
themselves have been such dreadful oppressors, and capable of excesses
contrary not only to the laws of England, but to those of nature and
humanity. But, alas! we have only to extract from the industrious Henry
one of those numerous passages which he has collected from
contemporary historians, to prove that fiction itself can hardly reach the
dark reality of the horrors of the period.
• It was a matter of public knowledge, they said, that after the conquest of
King William, his Norman followers, elated by so great a victory,
acknowledged no law but their own wicked pleasure, and not only
despoiled the conquered Saxons of their lands and their goods, but
invaded the honour of their wives and of their daughters with the most
unbridled license; and hence it was then common for matrons and
maidens of noble families to assume the veil, and take shelter in
convents, not as called thither by the vocation of God, but solely to
preserve their honour from the unbridled wickedness of man.
• Chapter Thirty-six:
Say not my art is fraud — all live by seeming.
The beggar begs with it, and the gay courtier
Gains land and title, rank and rule, by seeming;
The clergy scorn it not, and the bold soldier
Will eke with it his service. — All admit it,
All practise it; and he who is content
With showing what he is, shall have small credit
In church, or camp, or state — So wags the world.
Old Play
• Chapter Thirty-seven:
• She withdrew her veil, and looked on them with a
countenance in which bashfulness contended with dignity.
Her exceeding beauty excited a murmur of surprise, and the
younger knights told each other with their eyes, in silent
correspondence, that Brian’s best apology was in the power
of her real charms, rather than of her imaginary witchcraft.
• The circumstances of their evidence would have been, in
modern days, divided into two classes — those which were
immaterial, and those which were actually and physically
impossible. But both were, in those ignorant and
superstitious times, easily credited as proofs of guilt.
• Chapter Forty-one:
• Novelty in society and adventure were the zest of life to Richard
Coeur-de-Lion, and it had its highest relish when enhanced by
dangers encountered and surmounted. In the lion-hearted King, the
brilliant, but useless character, of a knight of romance, was in a
great measure realized and revived; and the personal glory which
he acquired by his own deeds of arms, was far more dear to his
excited imagination, than that which a course of policy and
wisdom would have spread around his government.
• Accordingly, his reign was like the course of a brilliant and
rapid meteor, which shoots along the face of Heaven,
shedding around an unnecessary and portentous light, which
is instantly swallowed up by universal darkness; his feats of
chivalry furnishing themes for bards and minstrels, but
affording none of those solid benefits to his country on which
history loves to pause, and hold up as an example to
posterity.
• Chapter Forty-four:
• Whatever head the Saxons might have made in the event of a
civil war, it was plain that nothing could be done under the
undisputed dominion of Richard, popular as he was by his
personal good qualities and military fame, although his
administration was wilfully careless, now too indulgent, and
now allied to despotism.
• Cedric lived to see this union approximate towards its
completion; for as the two nations mixed in society and
formed intermarriages with each other, the Normans abated
their scorn, and the Saxons were refined from their rusticity.
But it was not until the reign of Edward the Third that the
mixed language, now termed English, was spoken at the
court of London, and that the hostile distinction of Norman
and Saxon seems entirely to have disappeared.
• “Lady,” said Rebecca, “I doubt it not — but the people of
England are a fierce race, quarrelling ever with their
neighbours or among themselves, and ready to plunge the
sword into the bowels of each other. Such is no safe abode
for the children of my people.”
• Yet it would be enquiring too curiously to ask, whether the
recollection of Rebecca’s beauty and magnanimity did not
recur to his mind more frequently than the fair descendant of
Alfred might altogether have approved.
Later Assessment
• Scott's critical reputation declined in the last half of the 19th
century as serious writers turned from romanticism to
realism, and Scott began to be regarded as an author suitable
for children.
• This trend accelerated in the 20th century. For example, in
his classic study Aspects of the Novel (1927), E. M. Forster
harshly criticized Scott's clumsy and slapdash writing style,
"flat" characters, and thin plots.
• Nevertheless, Scott's importance as an innovator continued to be
recognized. He was acclaimed as the inventor of the genre of the
modern historical novel and the inspiration for enormous numbers
of imitators and genre writers both in Britain and on the European
continent.
• In the cultural sphere, Scott's Waverley novels played a
significant part in the movement in rehabilitating the public
perception of the Scottish Highlands and its culture, which had
been formerly suppressed as barbaric, and viewed in the southern
mind as a breeding ground of hill bandits, religious fanaticism,
and Jacobite rebellions.
• Scott served as chairman of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
and was also a member of the Royal Celtic Society.
• It is a testament to Scott's contribution in creating a unified
identity for Scotland that Edinburgh's central railway station,
opened in 1854 by the North British Railway, is called
Waverley.
• The fact that Scott was a Lowland Presbyterian, rather than a
Gaelic-speaking Catholic Highlander, made him more
acceptable to a conservative English reading public.
• Scott's advocacy of objectivity and moderation and his strong
repudiation of political violence on either side also had a
strong, though unspoken, contemporary resonance in an era
when many conservative English speakers lived in mortal
fear of a revolution in the French style on British soil.
• After Scott's work had been essentially unstudied for many
decades, a revival of critical interest began from the 1960s.
• While F. R. Leavis had disdained Scott, seeing him as a
thoroughly bad novelist and a thoroughly bad influence (The
Great Tradition, 1948), György Lukács (The Historical
Novel, 1962) and David Daiches (Scott's Achievement as a
Novelist, 1951) offered a Marxian political reading of Scott's
fiction that generated a great deal of genuine interest in his
work.
• Scott is now seen as an important innovator and a key figure
in the development of Scottish and world literature, and
particularly as the principal inventor of the historical novel.