Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott - John Sutherland (essay date 1995)
John Sutherland (essay date 1995)
SOURCE: "The Bride of Lammermoor to The Abbot (1818-1820)," in The Life of Walter Scott: A Critical Biography, Blackwell, 1995, pp. 220-39.
[In the following excerpt, Sutherland studies the conceptions of race and nationality in Ivanhoe, as seen both in the conflict between Normans and Saxons and in the ambivalent depiction of anti-Semitism.]
In 1819 Scotland's greatest novelist re-emerged as England's chronicler. Ivanhoe can be seen as tribute to Albion's growing cultural domination over its dependencies. Scott himself, rather unconvincingly, attributed the change in national subject matter to a fear that constant harping on Scottish themes would 'wear out the public favour'. One can explain the Englishing of Scott in other ways. He spent much of his out-of-court time in London over the period 1808-20 and knew the literary market well (as did Constable, who spent a...
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