SOURCE: "Culture and Economy in Ivanhoe," in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 42, No. 1, June, 1987, pp. 46-72.

Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe dramatizes culture as a semiotic system that constitutes social relations. The novel's protagonists are not just Cedric, Wilfred, Bois-Guilbert, and Isaac of York, but the languages they speak: Saxon, the lingua franca, Norman, and Hebrew. The theme of language that permeates Ivanhoe is a metaphor for culture, and the novel represents many other semiotic systems, including the cultural codes of etiquette, costume, architecture, cuisine, and economy. The desire to return to cultural and economic stability, when conflicts between cultures undermine the stability of each system, motivates the conclusion of the novel, the resolution of these conflicts providing new insight into Scott's use of the past.

Like the structural anthropologist, Scott posits structures that underlie cultural institutions. Drawing upon the insights of linguistics, Lévi-Strauss argues that a culture is a semiotic system that operates like a language. Underlying the particular manifestations of cultural institutions—the equivalent of the particular utterances, or parole, of language—are structures that govern the production of these institutions—their grammar, or langue.¹ While this provides a useful way of understanding Scott's own suggestion that he seeks a "grammar" through which to represent the past, we must place his practice in the context of the nineteenth-century tendency to find homologies between a nation's cultural institutions and its political economy. Many writers of the era treated the artistic and economic productions of a society as expressions of what it believed. Good art was a sign of a just society; an unjust society would produce inferior art.² It is most useful to regard Ivanhoe, not as an unwise foray into an area of history that Scott was unqualified to handle, but as an attempt to elaborate how a historical shift from one cultural code to another might take place. This lays the groundwork for an examination of Scott's particular use of the homology between culture and economy.

Although language is only one among a number of semiotic systems, it has a privileged place in the novel as their very type. The dedicatory epistle of Ivanhoe mocks the dry-as-dust antiquarian's demands for literal authenticity to the past in favor of the artist's ability to provide access to the past for the modern reader. It playfully dramatizes the problems of historical representation through the comic antagonism between the fictional author, or translator, of the Wardour manuscript, Laurence Templeton, and the scholarly reader, The Rev. Dr Jonas Dryasdust.³ Templeton supports the demands of modernity and favors mediation; Dryasdust defends the integrity of, and literal authenticity to, the past. Although only these two figures take part in the "dialogue," it implies a third position. Templeton stands between Dryasdust who lives in the past and the readers of his novel who live in the present, mediating between Dryasdust's demands for authenticity and the demands of the market place. He "translates" the medieval manuscript that contains the story of Ivanhoe into modern English so that it will be accessible to modern readers who, unlike the scholarly Dryasdust, would not understand either the manners, costume, or language of the time (p. 526). Undoubtedly aware that the narrative is riddled with anachronisms, he acknowledges that "the severer antiquary may think that .. . I am polluting the well of history with modern inventions," and concedes that he cannot "pretend to the observation of complete accuracy." But, he argues, by adhering to Dryasdust's principles in writing Queen-Hoo-Hall, Joseph Strutt had maintained such scrupulous regard for the past that his work was not intelligible to the modern reader. Therefore Templeton finds it "necessary . . . that the subject assumed should be, as it were, translated into the manners, as well as the language, of the age we live in" (p. 526; emphasis added).

This constitutes, of course, the classic problem of representation; if one represents the past with absolute fidelity, it will remain other—alien—to all readers. Templeton solves this problem by seeking a "neutral ground" of "manners and sentiments which are common to us and to our ancestors" (p. 527).⁴ He intends to use not the inaccessible vocabulary of the past, as Strutt had done, but a universal grammar or code of cultural relationships. Templeton's focus on the grammar of culture suggests that the semiotic system of social relations is a langue to which specific social practices are a mere parole. "Translation" becomes, via this neutral ground, a process of mediation between past and present. In this regard, he does not merely advocate the virtues of the present, but assumes a mediate historiographical viewpoint parallel to Scott's characteristic ethical attitude towards past and present.⁵

Templeton's narrative, like the dedicatory epistle, treats the relationship between past and present as a problem of language. In addition to Norman (both Langue d'oc and Langue d'oïl), Saxon, the linguafranca, and Hebrew, it represents Spanish, Saracen, and Latin as well as Friar Tuck's sign language, the language of courtly love, the jargon of hunting, and the formal language of treaty and war. From the opening scene, language serves not only as theme (as when Wamba and Gurth discuss the swine/pork distinction) but as plot device (as when Wilfred overhears Bois-Guilbert commanding his slaves, in Saracen, to kill Isaac of York).

It should not be surprising, therefore, that the novel transforms the debate between Templeton and Dryasdust on the question of historical representation into the conflict between Cedric and Wilfred of Ivanhoe on politics and culture. Like Dryasdust, Cedric defends the integrity of the past, insisting upon literal fidelity to Saxon language and culture; like Templeton, Wilfred seeks to accommodate the past to the present, translating Cedric's older values into the modern chivalric code. But, once again, their "dialogue" implies a third position. Wilfred clashes with Prince John and the Norman barons as well as with his father. Norman culture represents the present just as Saxon culture represents the past. Wilfred does not simply assume a mediate position between Norman and Saxon cultures; he attempts to translate Saxon culture into Norman.

The conflict between Norman and Saxon culture emerges vividly in the scenes of feasting—in Cedric's great hall and at Prince John's banquet—that link cuisine, language, costume, manners, and ultimately economy to the cultural code of each nation. Cedric's dinner reflects his values, emphasizing the simplicity of the cookery as well as of its presentation. It features pork, game, fish, breads, fruit, and honey. Norman cuisine is more complex, including the exotic "karum-pie" stuffed with nightingales and beccaficoes, as well as "rich pastry, . . . simnel bread and wastel cakes," the latter made from the most refined flours (pp. 158, 157). When Athelstane complains that their cooking uses too much garlic, he provides another indication that Norman cuisine is more highly seasoned than the simpler Saxon fare (p. 224). It is also artificial, the cooks having rendered even ordinary foodstuffs "perfectly unlike their natural appearance" (p. 157).

The scene of John's banquet also contrasts Norman and Saxon dress and table manners. Norman etiquette consists of "arbitrary rules": the Normans mock Cedric because he makes practical use of a towel to dry his hands "instead of suffering the moisture to exhale by waving them gracefully in the air" (p. 158; emphasis added). Similarly, while Saxon costume is "convenient," protecting the wearer from the elements, Norman dress is ornamental, exhibiting the "ingenuity of the tailor" just as Norman cooking displays the artistry of the chef. In each case, Norman customs are portrayed as ends in themselves, the arbitrary "fashion of the day," while Saxon culture stresses the utilitarian function of social practices (pp. 157, 156).

Even before any of these cultural distinctions emerge, the conflict of language arises. While offering his hospitality to Aymer and Bois-Guilbert, Cedric warns them that he has vowed not to speak Norman. Aymer takes up the theme later that evening when he vaunts the Norman vocabulary of the hunt. But Cedric regards Norman hunting jargon an "over-sea refinement," both foreign and unnecessarily artificial. While Saxon bards create simple and authentic historical narratives, the Norman troubadour, he claims, merely "garnishes" his tale (p. 52). Cedric attempts to maintain the autonomy and integrity of Saxon culture by speaking only Saxon. Because political expediency forces him to comprehend Norman, he attempts to make Rowena, who knows only the Saxon language, the pure exemplar of Saxon culture. As the heir to the Saxon royal family, she represents for Cedric the possibility of a return to the past, and he deems it vital to his aims that she be kept pure of Norman pollution. He seems to have succeeded to some degree; Rowena—along with "twenty matrons and maidens of distinguished Saxon lineage"—sings a dirge which is so deeply embedded in the Saxon past that Templeton can only "decipher two or three stanzas" (p. 482; emphasis added). His inability to "translate" the remainder of Rowena's song suggests that only this passage of the Wardour manuscript is so authentically Saxon that it has no common ground with the present.

Several basic oppositions pervade these contrasts between Norman and Saxon cultures: nature/artifice; function/ornament; intrinsicality/arbitrariness. Underlying these oppositions is the opposition between the linguistic sign as either naturally or arbitrarily linked signifier and signified. In the semiotics of Saxon culture, a cultural practice must always be grounded in some way, as natural, functional, or intrinsic. Cuisine represents foodstuffs for what they are, natural plants and animals; clothing expresses its protective function; language conveys the immanent facts of life and history. The Normans, by contrast, make the signifier, or cultural practice, arbitrary. They make food unlike its natural appearance; they wear clothing that exists for the sake of fashion rather than function; their table manners are arbitrary. Their cultural practices exist for their own sake without reference to their "natural" signified (there may, of course, be secondary purposes such as signifying that one belongs to the ruling class).

These distinctions must be understood in the context of the contemporary criticism of art as merely ornamental, not intrinsically related to the communication of meaning. Cedric's preference for the utilitarian, both in language and customs—Norman poetry merely "garnishes," Norman etiquette is arbitrary—aligns him with Dryasdust against the artistry of Templeton who argues for the necessity of translation to make the past live for the present.⁶ Similarly, Dryasdust argues that whereas the earlier Waverley novels gained their authority from the author's access to people who lived in the historical times represented—to the spoken word—a representation of the English Middle Ages must depend upon the written word, the mediation of "musty records and chronicles" (p. 523). We are reminded that the novel's writers include Rebecca, Isaac, John, Aymer, and the inditer of the yeomen's challenge to Torquilstone, but not Cedric.

This desire for a direct link between signifier and signified, which has traditionally privileged the spoken as opposed to written word, leads to another opposition, between the single and the many. In his history of the fall of the Saxons, Cedric condemns the artistry of the Norman stained-glass maker for breaking the natural "golden light of God's blessed day into so many fantastic hues" (p. 222). He desires a return from the multiplicity of languages and cultural codes to a single language and code because it represents a return to meaningfulness and cultural identity. If the same signified has multiple signifiers—if there are innumerable ways to dry one's hands and no one correct way—then the connection of signifier to signified will always be arbitrary.

A corollary of the opposition of the one to the many is the opposition of the domestic to the exotic. Cedric's cuisine appears to draw upon the resources of England alone whereas Norman cuisine relies upon imports from many nations. Economy, therefore, can be treated in the same manner as other cultural institutions. Trade introduces the multiplicity of European cultural productions into the unity of the domestic economy.

Cedric's account of the fall of the Saxons links the military defeat at Hastings to an earlier cultural and economic invasion and demonstrates why economy must be treated like any other cultural institution or semiotic system. Recounting how Wolfganger Torquilstone's father had hired a Norman artisan to produce stained glass for his castle, the art of glassmaking being unknown in the Saxon kingdom, he contrasts the artifice of glassmaking—it breaks God's light into fantastic hues—with "the honest simplicity and hardihood with which our brave ancestors supported themselves." He attributes the fall of the Saxons not to military defeat, but to Saxon acquiescence in Norman cultural values, turning, significantly, to a culinary metaphor to describe the process: "Far better was our homely diet, eaten in peace and liberty, than the luxurious dainties, the love of which hath delivered us as bondsmen to the foreign conqueror!" (p. 222). The Saxons are defeated because their acquiescence in Norman culture has led to their acquiescence in Norman commerce. The Norman invasion is differentiated from the earlier invasions of Britain—in which the Saxons themselves took part—only because it brings England into the European economy. In the context of Cedric's other cultural values, the contrast between domestic and foreign cuisine becomes a contrast between domestic economy and foreign commerce.

The opposition that underlies the conflict of cultural codes also underlies the conflict of economies: an economy grounded in the proprietor's land is opposed to an economy dependent upon the circulation of capital. Cedric's cuisine is domestic, reflecting the economy of a self-enclosed estate. This estate is relatively autonomous; most of the food and many utensils—spits double as serving utensils and drinking cups are made of horn—are the natural products of his land. Cedric's economy, like his costume, must be directly grounded in that which gives them meaning and reality. Since land is the only true source of wealth, what he serves at his table must be the natural produce of his lands; swine flesh, the principal ingredient of the meal, is, we are told elsewhere, the principal source of his "domestic wealth" (p. 34).

By contrast, the consumption of imported wines and "delicacies brought from foreign parts" by the Normans represents an economy of trade (p. 157). The complexity of the cuisine reflects the international influences of a variety of culinary traditions on a culture engaged in commerce and adventurism. Prince John's feast, like Cedric's, displays wealth, but it is wealth of a different kind. He does not display the produce of his own lands, but the ability of wealth to procure an international array of foodstuffs and to hire specialists to prepare them. Significantly, his banquet does not take place in his own great hall but on the road, at the site of the tournament at Ashby; his wealth is mobile. Although the Normans also value land—they are always attempting to appropriate it—they do not consider it the basis of a domestic economy but a source of plunder for immediate wealth. Instead, they take advantage of the disjunction between wealth and land to exacerbate the tendency of commerce towards adventurism, stealing what cannot be had through the more subtle operations of cultural and economic appropriation.

Wilfred and his allies attempt to engage in the modern economy without entailing the dangers of disjoining wealth and land. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith argued that the division of labor and the use of some form of money accompanies the development of urban, commercial society.⁷ In Ivanhoe, the emergence of an economy of trade coincides with the division of labor and the development of capital, each producing new social roles. The division of labor produces the special class of artisans—glass makers, tailors, and chefs—who work with the raw materials obtained through exchange. The use of money introduces a second social group, the money-lenders. The Norman barons, while they serve as a sort of police force that accompanies the introduction of commerce, do not themselves fill either role because, by its very international nature, this economy is not exclusively Norman; it is European.

The cultural identity of the Jewish money-lenders is not linked to any particular nation, let alone to land, and Isaac of York's name designates him as part of the urban, not the rural, economy. Most importantly, he possesses his wealth in the form of gold currency, a form directly opposed to Cedric's land-based wealth. Whereas Cedric produces wealth from his land, Isaac produces it from money itself. Usury has traditionally been considered "unnatural"; while Cedric's wealth increases through the natural reproduction of swine and other agricultural produce, usury was condemned as artificial since inanimate gold cannot naturally reproduce.⁸ Similarly, bills of exchange, mere written documents, are not valuable in themselves but are arbitrary signifiers of wealth. These bills anticipate the introduction of paper money that was also greeted with anxiety about the potential exploitation of arbitrary signs of wealth.⁹

Coins and bills have the advantage of being interchangeable; indeed, that is, according to Smith, their very purpose. The most commonly employed currency in the novel is neither Norman nor Saxon, but the Venetian zecchin. The use of the zecchin creates no problems because all agree on its value. Furthermore, because there need be no intrinsic relationship between the coin and the nation where it circulates, international trade is possible. Money might be regarded as serving a function similar to that of translation. Indeed, as Marc Shell points out, most Germanic and Indo-European languages use related words to signify transference of property and of linguistic meaning (p. 85). Translation and commerce both involve an exchange: translation of cultural practices creates an exchange of values; exchange of money enables an exchange of valuables. While land remains valuable, it will no longer be the primary form of wealth. Adam Smith attributes the deterioration of the allodial proprietor's domestic economy—the old order to which Cedric belongs—to "the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures" (p. 388; see also McMaster, p. 68). Whereas a wealthy man like Cedric who lives in a country that conducts no foreign commerce must spend all of his money on employing retainers—Athelstane remarks how his ancestors used to hold daily feasts for hundreds—those who take part in modern commerce can spend the majority of their wealth on consumer goods for themselves (Smith, pp. 389-90). One's wealth does not need to be immediately visible in one's land, but can be displayed through what one purchases with money.

The pervasiveness of the analogy between cultural and economic exchange may be illustrated by the two following examples. First, the narrator claims that the English language has been "richly improved by importations" of the various languages of southern Europe (p. 9; emphasis added). Words, like goods, circulate among nations, and commercial exchange results in enrichment. Correlatively, international traffic requires Isaac to be a translator of European languages (p. 118). Second, Gurth is described, when in disguise as Wilfred's squire, as a "translated swineherd" (p. 190). Disguises function much like other signifiers as artificial signifiers of identity. Accordingly, Cedric—"no ready practiser of the art of dissimulation"—has difficulties when he assumes the disguise of the monk from Wamba (p. 282); he believes that one's appearance ought to be a natural sign of one's identity and thus is ill at ease wearing an arbitrary disguise.¹⁰ Each cultural institution appears to be moving toward a state in which exchange, or translation, permits a certain freedom of movement. Words and customs move from nation to nation; goods can be exchanged among them; identity moves toward the mobility of self-determination.

Translation and money not only make the exchange of values and valuables possible by providing the medium through which exchange takes place, they also protect that exchange. The multiplication of cultural codes and languages often proves dangerous in Ivanhoe. Bois-Guilbert orders his slaves to kill Isaac of York within the hearing of the unsuspecting victim who does not understand Saracen. During the siege of Torquilstone, the Normans attempt to sneak a message past the Saxon yeomen by writing it in Norman. Cedric's solution—to return to a single language—would protect him from such practices, but would mean the impoverishment of his culture. Athelstane, the heir to the royal line, seems little tainted by Norman culture, yet he hardly exhibits the ideals of Saxon hardihood touted by Cedric. He is not only a vacillating and timorous leader, but a gross sensualist who can barely distinguish between the callings of his stomach and the call to honor. By contrast, the ability to translate is the best defense against the proliferation of languages; Wilfred overhears Bois-Guilbert's order to kill Isaac, and Richard intercepts the Norman message. Furthermore, in addition to protecting Isaac through his knowledge of Saracen, Wilfred's knowledge of Norman enables him to befriend Richard; of Saxon, to patronize Gurth; and of Spanish, to declare his identity as the "Disinherited" (Desdichado).

Similarly, the spread of currencies, like the proliferation of languages, has potentially dangerous effects that partly justify Cedric's fears. Because it can be readily exchanged, currency is more vulnerable to theft than other forms of wealth. Furthermore, because the money-lender has no land to support retainers who would protect him, he is even more vulnerable to such theft.

The Norman barons take advantage of this vulnerability. Unlike Cedric, they do not resist the new economy, and they are willing to make use of the services of the money-lenders. Nonetheless, they cannot resist preying on them. The Normans had brought the Jews with them at the time of the invasion, but would, after taxing them heavily and fomenting anti-Semitism, expel them in 1290. Their attitude represents the tendency of commerce to turn against itself because of the temptation to exploit the arbitrariness of the sign. The Norman barons do not borrow money in order to invest it in mercantile schemes but to finance wars. In other words, they borrow so they can steal, but their legitimation of theft simultaneously undermines the rights of property on which the economy is based.

Once again, Cedric's solution would not be adequate. Taking back what has been stolen cannot reverse the effects of the new economy. The Normans would soon be back to reclaim England. In spite of the fact that land appears to be less vulnerable because it is not mobile, it has been stolen by Normans who continue to attempt to appropriate it. Isaac, who has a greater opportunity to increase his wealth so long as the laws of property are upheld, is better off than the other victims of the Normans. Just as translation protects Isaac from languages he does not know, the bill of exchange at least partially protects Jewish wealth from illegal expropriation (see pp. 69-70). When it is stolen, the gold it represents can be retained precisely because the bill is arbitrary and worthless in itself.

The basic problem of the "condition of the English nation" at the outset of the novel is not oppression of the conquered by the conquerors, but the prevailing atmosphere of "license" and "lawless[ness] (pp. 7, 74). The arbitrary circulation of signs under the auspices of Prince John reinforces Cedric's anxieties about the arbitrariness of justice. Not just the rules of etiquette but the laws of the land are arbitrarily applied, and England is on the verge of civil war. The opposition of the many versus the one applies again; multiple codes threaten the single law of the land. There are so many laws and codes—legal (property, poaching, serfdom, usury, taxation of Jews), religious (the vows of Aymer, Tuck, and the Templars as well as Jewish dietary and marriage laws), ethical (chivalry, honor, hospitality), and cultural (cuisine, etiquette, costume, architecture)—that they come into conflict with one another, leading to a breakdown of the law and justice. The arbitrariness of the law produces the same result as exchange and translation: the Normans violate the law in order to seek their own advantage; the heroes, when they break the law at all, do so to protect themselves. Friar Tuck violates his religious vows and the yeomen rob and poach in order to survive in a land that has taken away their ability to earn an honest living. The Templar code—with its severe "Capitals"—is imposing, but, because the Templars make it mean whatever they wish, it becomes completely arbitrary. Beaumanoir intends to execute the death sentence called for by his religious code even though it would violate the laws of England, and the celibate Bois-Guilbert intends to obtain a dispensation permitting him to make Rebecca his paramour.

Just as Wilfred and Richard mediate exchange and translation, their authority is required to mediate and guarantee law and order. They enable England to reap the benefit of entering the European economy without the threatened loss of meaning and cultural identity feared by Cedric. Wilfred's use of money, language and chivalry mediates between Saxon and Norman. He is the novel's pre-eminent polylinguist, having learned not only Norman but Saracen and perhaps Spanish and Latin as well, indeed all of the languages spoken in the novel with the exception of Hebrew. He uses this knowledge, as he uses his skill in horsemanship, to protect the oppressed, never seeking land or money, although he has both pressed upon him, and always repaying his debts.

Wilfred's use of Norman customs may compromise the integrity and autonomy of Saxon culture, but he does not become an artificial and inauthentic Norman dandy. Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that Wilfred adopts the code of chivalry than that he adopts Norman manners. He does not appear to have any interest in the recherché code of the hunt, nor does he partake in any of the purely arbitrary affectations of the Normans unless it be the display of horsemanship for its own sake in the lists of Ashby. He regards the code of chivalry as a modern "translation" of the values espoused by his father. His description of the chivalric knight as "the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, [and] the curb of the power of the tyrant" coincides with Cedric's reputation as "friend of the rights of Englishmen" (pp. 318, 206). Both fight for individual rights, but they have different conceptions of those rights. For Cedric, the rights of Englishmen will not be sustained so long as the Plantagenets rule England, but Wilfred seems to recognize that the Norman conquest represents more than dynasties and races. One could argue that Wilfred is more European than Norman, chivalry being a European rather than a specifically Norman phenomenon. Indeed, the Norman barons merely manipulate the signifiers of chivalry—the pomp of Ashby, De Bracy's courtly speeches, etc.—while Wilfred and Richard come to the aid of the oppressed. Wilfred's adoption of this code represents not so much his acquiescence in the culture of the conqueror as his acceptance of a transnational culture that he has encountered on his journey to join the Crusades. Richard also assumes the role of cultural mediator. While Wilfred learns the values of chivalry, Richard comes to appreciate "the value of Saxon virtue" and banishes the lawless Norman Templars (p. 353). Templeton delineates his role as a mediator in a footnote justifying the depiction of Richard singing in the Saxon language. Although he acknowledges that this is historically inaccurate, he is more concerned to "assimilate" the Norman king, who can sing in both Saxon and Norman, to the band of yeomen (p. 561, n. 1). Although, as we shall see, Richard's reestablishment of the authority of the law is problematic, he represents a position that guarantees the validity of translation and exchange as well as the administration of justice. He is the source of social order.

While the novel pits one semiotic code against another, these pairs of opposed values are themselves the stuff of the novel's, or Scott's, own semiotic code. Because the oppositions are in conflict, they are not, however, static. The historical novel projects the semiotic code through time, imagining the mediation between the two emerging in yet another cultural code. This mediation of the Norman/Saxon conflict dictates the shape of Templeton's narrative; he plots it as a comedy that seeks a return to unity and order, both cultural and economic. In the first chapter he proleptically outlines this plot in terms of linguistic compromise:

the necessary intercourse betwen the lords of the soil, and those oppressed inferior beings by whom that soil was cultivated, occasioned the gradual formation of a dialect, compounded betwixt the French and the Anglo-Saxon, in which they could render themselves mutually intelligible to each other; and from this necessity arose by degrees the structure of our present English language, in which the speech of the victors and the vanquished have been so happily blended together. (p. 9)

What is foreshadowed here is fulfilled in the final chapter. The marriage of Rowena and Wilfred signifies the union of cultures and serves as a "pledge of the future peace and harmony betwixt two races." This symbolic union, in turn, will encourage the establishment of the "mixed language, now termed English" (p. 515). Templeton thus plots the novel as a conflict between languages and codes in which, through a process of linguistic miscegenation, Norman and Saxon merge to form the modern English language in which the novel is written.

Templeton's plot is a translation of Cedric's "plot" to overthrow Norman authority. Cedric also seeks a comic conclusion. A return to the Saxon economy (through the return of Saxon lands to the "rightful" owners) and to Saxon culture (through cultural purification achieved by ousting the Normans) would reestablish the cultural autonomy and integrity of the Saxon idyll of pre-Norman England.

Since it is a return to the same culture and economy that preceded the anarchy caused by the Norman economic and military invasion, Cedric's plot is circular. Yet Cedric is doomed to failure. Although he envisions a return to social harmony and lawfulness, Templeton numbers him among the forces of anarchy because he would overthrow the law of King Richard. Templeton represents the proposed rebellion not as a resistance movement but as "revolution" and "civil war" (pp. 195, 514). In 1819, the year in which Scott wrote Ivanhoe, "revolution" would have brought to mind both the French revolution itself and English fears of revolution following the Peterloo incident (which occurred while Scott was writing the novel); "civil war" further suggests a single nation divided rather than Saxons throwing off the Norman yoke. More importantly, Cedric fails to recognize that, since the Norman invasion was socioeconomic rather than military, a military rebellion has little chance of reversing the process of cultural miscegenation or displacing the new economy that has forever changed the meaning of property. He might be able to rid England of Norman aristocrats, but he cannot rid it of Norman culture; he is forced to acknowledge that his Saxon "bards are no more" and his language is "hastening to decay" (p. 53).

In order to overcome these difficulties, Templeton's "translation" of Cedric's plot creates an ending that satisfies the franklin's desires, but not in the precise form that Cedric envisions. As we have seen, Templeton does envision a return to a single language as figure for a unified culture, but, instead of a return to the Saxon language, his ending combines Saxon and Norman into yet a newer form, English. While he also imagines the reunification of land, it comes about not through a rebellion but through the establishment of alliances that produce social harmony. Instead of the circular return to origins envisioned by Cedric, his plot is the Romantic spiral that returns to a transformed place of origin.¹¹

Prince John is also a plotter, and his plot can be regarded as the converse of Cedric's. Cedric is not the primary force of anarchy, and he ends up reluctantly, and indeed unwittingly, fighting on the side of the principal forces of order—Richard and the yeomen—against the principal forces of disorder—the refractory Norman barons. John plots to wrest England from his brother, his very means of doing so—obtaining the loyalty of his followers by awarding them Saxon estates—representing his more general aim of despoiling the kingdom. His disregard for Saxon property rights extends to a disdain for Saxon culture, and justifies Cedric's fears that his culture would be completely effaced under John's rule. His plot, like Cedric's, would also produce a unified England; he would rule as its lone monarch and Norman culture would predominate. Yet, like Cedric's, his plot has fatal weaknesses. It too would set off a civil war, leading to further discord rather than social harmony. He also encourages disregard for the law by his constant disregard for property rights and the license he permits his followers.

While accepting the values of the modern economy and culture, Templeton's translated plot includes the virtues of the older Saxon culture that would contain the excesses of unrestrained laissez-faire represented by Norman excesses. To accomplish this, he substitutes the siege of Torquilstone for the civil wars plotted by John and Cedric. Torquilstone is the appropriate place for the reincarnation of English culture since it had been, as we have seen, the site of that culture's downfall. The siege creates an alliance of Norman king with Saxon nobility and yeomanry that foreshadows the new social order. Instead of Saxons throwing off the Norman yoke, Saxons ally with the Norman king to put down a rebellion of Norman barons. Instead of returning land to its pre-conquest owners, the siege brings an end to the threat to property and restores Ivanhoe to Wilfred.

This explains how a marriage between two Saxons, albeit the purest and the most Normanized representatives of the race, can be a "pledge" of future intermarriages between Normans and Saxons. Cedric's plan to marry Rowena to Athelstane attempted to establish an "absolute union" that represents an absolute return of Saxon lands and purity of Saxon culture (p. 512). This marriage of Saxon to Saxon would be culturally retrograde, Athelstane being only a biological representative of the Saxon heritage, not a cultural one. Similarly, John's plot to marry Rowena to De Bracy aims, as we have seen, to replace Saxon with Norman culture. Achieved through kidnapping and coercion, it would sustain the forced submission of Saxon women to Norman lords represented by the relationship between Ulrica and the Front-de-Bœufs, just as John's current practices reduplicate the theft of land during the initial conquest. The marriage of Wilfred and Rowena emphasizes the importance of cultural over racial integration. Biological miscegenation would simply efface the Saxon race, absorbing it to the Norman. By marrying Rowena to Wilfred, Templeton suggests that a merging of cultures is the pre-condition of social harmony.

While marriage thus accomplishes cultural unity, it also represents the return to economic stability as a return to landed property. Since Cedric views land as the basis of his economy, and therefore of his culture, the return of English land to the Saxons is central to his scheme of rebellion. Furthermore, the focus of cultural conflict in the novel is the theft of property. Cedric is particularly concerned about "neighbouring baron[s] whose consciousness of strength made [them] . . . negligent of the laws of property" (p. 34). Virtually every violation of law and code in the novel can be traced to some question of property.¹² Front-de-Bœuf attempts to extort money from Isaac and to usurp Ivanhoe from Wilfred, and De Bracy would obtain Rowena's estate by compelling her to marry him. The title of the novel itself indicates the centrality of property; Ivanhoe is a disputed estate. Ivanhoe had once belonged to a Saxon but was taken by the Normans during the conquest. Richard confers it on Wilfred (I use this name instead of the more familiar Ivanhoe to distinguish him from this estate) to compensate him because he has been disinherited by his father. But then Prince John gives it to Front-de-Bœuf to-engage his loyalty. Finally, it returns to Wilfred after the siege of Torquilstone. The fate of Ivanhoe represents the general question of the orderly and legal transfer of property, and the fact that no one enters the estate during the novel and that the location, value, and size of Ivanhoe remain unknown—even the battle for it is not fought there but at another usurped estate, Torquilstone—attest to its primarily symbolic significance.

The novel's primary figure for the loss of land, disinheritance, is, like the figure of language, introduced in chapter 1. Believing that his son has already discarded his cultural inheritance, Cedric deprives him of his literal inheritance and seeks to restore English lands to the disinherited Saxons. But, once again, the conclusion fulfills his desires in a form different from that which he imagines.

While Wilfred "translates" rather than abandons Saxon culture, he does identify with his fellow "disinherited" Saxons in his confrontation with Bois-Guilbert, who is least sympathetic with Saxon culture since he has never lived in England, and with Front-de-Bœuf, who would usurp Ivanhoe. Disinherited by his father and, more importantly, champion of the disinherited Saxons, Wilfred appears in the lists of Ashby bearing on his shield the motto "Desdichado" and earning the title of "Disinherited Knight." While Cedric disinherits his son because he believes that his actions will block the restoration of the Saxon inheritance, Wilfred, in fact, manages to bring about what Cedric desires, the consolidation of Saxon lands in the hands of a Saxon lord. The liason of Ulrica with the Front-de-Bœufs had coincided with the usurpation of the Wolfganger estate, and the intended marriage of Rowena to De Bracy would have absorbed her property to the Norman domains. But Wilfred will ultimately unite three estates: Rotherwood, which will eventually be his since his father finally forgives him; Hargottstandstede, which his heirs will inherit through his marriage to Rowena; and Ivanhoe, awarded to him by King Richard.

The fate of Torquilstone, closely related to that of Ivanhoe, remains undecided. With the destruction of the castle, the families of both its former Saxon and more recent Norman lords have died out, suggesting that the factions they represent will not inherit the new England. Ivanhoe replaces Torquilstone as the representative estate ruled by a family that allies Norman and Saxon cultures. Richard's restoration of order does not exactly return England to the Saxons or the domestic economy, but it does assure Cedric of the safety of his property from unscrupulous "neighbouring" barons. While those who attack the person of the king are spared, he metes out the death penalty to the conspirators named Malvoisin, or "Bad-neighbor" (pp. 34, 508).

As elegant as the symmetries of this closure are, the importance given to land becomes problematic because the return of lands seems to represent an attempted return to the land, a literal return to the old Saxon culture that Cedric desires but that Templeton's narrative has been denying. The special privilege given to the return of land is suggested by the fact that the inter-marriage of Norman and Saxon and the emergence of the English language are projected into the future; only the consolidation of land occurs in the present. Even the device on Wilfred's shield, the uprooted oak, shifts disinheritance from culture to the land. Yet, while he receives his inheritance triple-fold, the other groups that the novel designates as "disinherited"—the yeomen and the Jews—do not receive the benefit of a similar restoration of property (pp. 127, 117). In spite of the shift to the money-based economy, the novel seems to privilege the old domestic economy that might be recuperated by consolidating land in the hands of the Saxon nobility and by excluding forces alien to the old order.

The legends of Robin Hood represent him as an inveterate foe of Norman injustice, and in Ivanhoe he steals only from the Normans while avoiding even wealthy Saxons. Robin Hood detests the Normans as much as Cedric, but he identifies more readily with Wilfred because they are both, in spite of class differences, "disinherited" (p. 127). His feats of archery at Ashby match Wilfred's feats of horsemanship in the lists, and he takes over the defense of Saxon rights just at the moment when Wilfred becomes incapacitated, disappearing when Wilfred reappears after the attempted ambush of Richard. Like Wilfred, he does not seek a restoration of the Saxon kingdom, opposing Cedric as well as Prince John by declaring his allegiance to Richard at Ashby well before they become allies at Torquilstone. Both he and Wilfred are identified with the king; Wilfred is once mistaken for Richard, and Robin Hood is the "monarch" or "King of outlaws" (pp. 348, 465).

Whereas Cedric and his retainers belong to the past, the dialectic of the novel makes the yeomen, along with Wilfred and Richard, the representatives of England's future. This historical progression is represented by the "translation" of Gurth from serf and swineherd to yeoman and squire. He joins the ranks of the yeomen at the siege of Torquilstone and becomes one of them at the conclusion of the novel when he receives his manumission. Cedric's older notions of English liberty prompt him to give Gurth a piece of land along with his freedom because he feels that freedom would be useless without it. But, although Gurth receives his manumission gratis from the grateful franklin, he has already earned the money to buy it. This money—received from Rebecca and Wilfred—must be balanced against the land he receives from Cedric. Gurth does not intend to settle down as a farmer, but to follow his new master Wilfred. The vigorous squire prefers the freedom of a mercenary relationship to the paternalism of serfdom belauded by the childlike Wamba: "the serf sits by the hall fire when the freeman must forth to the field of battle" (p. 350).¹³ Zecchins will be of more use to Gurth than a hide of land because their mobility will enable him to follow Wilfred in his wanderings. Furthermore, with his industry and enthusiasm, one imagines that he will be able to make his way in the world as chivalry itself goes on the wane.

Similarly, the yeomen seem the very models of industry and virtue. In spite of their reputation as outlaws, the narrative represents them as the most orderly segment of society: loyal, honest, and just. They are also the most able. Whereas Cedric is incompetent in modern warfare and Athelstane "unready," Robin Hood joins Richard to lead a successful attack on the Norman barons. Robin Hood is even more practical than Richard whom he must rescue because the idealistic king insists on travelling alone according to the code of chivalric knighthood.¹⁴

Yet the narrative provides only marginal restoration of lands to the yeomen. Their primary complaint is that the forest laws unjustly deprive them of the right to seek their living from the land. These hunting laws typify the arbitrariness of Norman rule since they do not aim to maintain social order but to provide a privilege for the Norman nobility. Richard promises to restore to the yeomen their right to hunt on the land by restraining "the tyrannical exercise of the forest rights and other oppressive laws, by which so many English yeomen were driven into a state of rebellion" (p. 475). Yet he will die before he can carry out this promise, and the forest laws would not be abated until John was forced to accept the Charter of the Forest in 1217 (the forest laws were not entirely abolished until 1817, just before the writing of Ivanhoe).

The novel concludes without resolving the problem of how the yeomen, newly pledged to keep the peace, will be able to avoid returning to outlawry. Abatement of the forest laws would in any case only enable them to hunt, yet they steal as well as poach. The new order, which will merge Norman and Saxon cultures, will deprive them of their occupation since it will leave them without victims that they can justly attack. Although Robin Hood is a pastoral hero, historical forces seem to be driving him and his men off the land and outside of the rural economy. In so far as they attempt to remain on the land, they will be socially ambiguous and potentially disruptive. Yet, because they are basically orderly, they seem likely to apply their "middle-class" virtues of industry and practicality in making themselves honest urban tradesmen.

If the yeomen become tradesmen, the Jews will provide their capital. Isaac and Rebecca are also identified with the hero of the novel as belonging to a disinherited race. They are, indeed, the principal figures of disinheritance because of their traditional status as homeless wanderers. Redoubling their disinheritance, the Crusades, which occupy the background of the novel, witness Moslems and Christians, both of whom abhor Jews, laying claim to the former Jewish homeland. Most significantly, the Jews are disinherited because their property is not in land but in gold. The prominent place given to pork in the novel represents another opposition between Cedric and Isaac: it is the basis of Cedric's wealth and abhorrent to the Jews. Appropriately, the Jewish pork taboo represents their displacement from the land (which is the basis of Cedric's economy) into the urban capitalist economy with which they are identified.

Their role makes them even more essential than the yeomen to England's future, yet they do not receive even a token return of their inheritance. As we have seen, inheritance has been closely identified with land while the wealth of the Jews lies entirely in capital. Disinheritance becomes the basis for their culture, a culture of social displacement in which they are the most free to operate in the world of commerce. Indeed, the ending of the novel disinherits them one step further when they choose yet another exile, this time from their adopted homeland. In one respect, this exile completes the return to the old order represented by Wilfred's accumulation of estates since it removes the Jews who, as both moneylenders and the most alien cultural group in England, represent the new cultural and economic order. This exceeds, and perhaps undermines, Templeton's strategy of giving the form of the old Saxon culture to the new European one because it attempts to exile commerce instead of simply giving it the stable form of the Saxon domestic economy.

Yet the new order depends on those who are denied their inheritance. The yeomen serve the role of protector more effectively than the knights, rescuing Wilfred at Torquilstone and Richard from Waldemar Fitzurse's ambush. They and their allies, in turn, are aided by Rebecca and Isaac. Rebecca's gift of twenty zecchins represents a major contribution to the cause of buying Gurth's freedom. And Wilfred's victory at the tournament of Ashby depends as much on Isaac's capital outlay for his horse and armor as on his own knowledge of chivalry and horsemanship.

While the Jews are regarded as parastic outsiders, their centrality—rather than peripherality—to the English economy is exhibited throughout the novel. The second major social role of the Jew, complementary to moneylending, is that of healer. If her father is a parasite, Rebecca is a "leech." Unlike her father, she seeks no profit, but, like him, she enables the heroes of the novel to succeed. As investments, her cures are just as effective as her father's loans. The peasant joiner Higg testifies on her behalf at her trial for sorcery; Wilfred flies forth to champion her honor; and Robin Hood, who is never dependent on anyone else, reduces Isaac's ransom because Rebecca had redeemed him from the gyves at York and cured him of an illness. If her exile implies that society will be able to dispense with the services of the Jews once order is restored, the final scene of the novel hints that the new order remains insecure. Rebecca's gift of jewels of "immense value" (p. 517) suggests that Wilfred's three estates will not suffice to sustain him in the modern world, and that he will continue to depend on her and her father just as he did when he was forced to accept their loan in order to defend England at Ashby.

These problems must be understood in the context of Scott's use of history. His commitment to the past and history is also a commitment to the process of historical change that continuously shapes the present. History is the history of cultural values in conflict, whether the conflict be between Highlander and Lowlander, Saxon and Norman, or Tory and Whig. The opposed values of the conflicting cultures themselves, however, form a semiotic code. They cannot exist independently because they are binary oppositions in which one term has meaning only in relation to the other. Thus the code of the past is a fiction only imaginable within Scott's own semiotic code. His fictions of the Norman and Saxon cultural codes are, to return to the terms of the dedicatory epistle, a modern vocabulary. Like Templeton, he allows that this vocabulary may be historically inaccurate, but insists that his own era and the Middle Ages have recourse to a common grammar, the "common ground" of a dialectic of cultural values in an era of transition.

This dialectic accounts for the problems of the conclusion. His novel apprehends socio-historical change as the introduction of arbitrariness—freedom of relationship between signifier and signified—into culture. The values of the past represent the possibility of delimiting this arbitrariness so that progress can occur without the danger of total anarchy, of revolution. The conclusion of the novel imagines that the return to the land will contain the dangers of economic exchange. Similarly, the old single language will be replaced by a new single language, English, which does not just merge past and present, Norman and Saxon, but contains all of the languages of Europe.

This returns us to the intersection of language and economy in the dedicatory epistle. Templeton argues for the introduction of arbitrariness in the "vocabulary" of historical representation in order to satisfy the needs of the market, but he also insists that his "grammar" will prevent abuse of that (poetic) license. The freedom to create a fictive vocabulary of the past opens up the possibility that his narrative will be pure fantasy, and the potential arbitrariness of such a fantasy would contribute to the breakdown of coherent culture in the free market of literature. At this time, of course, a growing readership and ever cheaper publication were producing literature for an increasing number of political parties and cultural factions. Literature was becoming part of the process by which society was thrown into conflict and verging on "civil war."

Scott himself exploited the free market of literature by wearing the various disguises of the pseudonymous "authors" of his works. Yet he also encountered its dangers when pirates attempted to steal his identity by publishing novels as the work of "the author of Waverley." Indeed, one such case forced him to desist from his plan of publishing Ivanhoe as the work of Laurence Templeton without the customary inscription on the title page identifying it as the work of "the author of Waverley." While in 1819 the government responded to the dangers of the press with the Six Acts abridging freedom of speech, Scott aspired to a more moderate solution that would authorize the valuable freedom of the sign but contain it within his narrative as English contained the languages of Europe. While Templeton seems promodern in his dedicatory epistle, he is anti-modern in the narrative proper, mocking not Cedric's manners but the artificiality of Norman culture. He is committed to Wilfred and Richard's "translation" of the old economy and culture into the new, but he manifests, like Dryasdust and Cedric, a profound nostalgia for the old. The implied author of Ivanhoe contains Templeton's translation within the limits defined by Dryasdust.

Scott's dialectic inaugurates a semiotics of nineteenth-century history. In spite of philosophical, political, and aesthetic differences, writers like Scott, Carlyle, Arnold, Mill, Tennyson, and Ruskin apprehend historical time as the alternation between periods of cultural stability—an era of faith, an "epoch of concentration," an "organic period"—and periods of unstable change—an era of unbelief, an "epoch of expansion," a "critical period," or "an era of transition."¹⁵ During a period of stability, the sign is natural and stable; during a period of change, it is arbitrary and unstable. This model of history generates a dialectic of stability and change in which the writer attempts to find an encompassing semiotic through which the stability of a fixed and natural semiotic code can contain the dangers of the arbitrary sign that motivate historical change. With deep anxiety, these writers define their own time as one of change and instability. But they are not so naive as to imagine that the past was stable and changeless. One must recall that Ivanhoe begins by depicting "the condition of the English nation" as anarchic (pp. 74-75). The stable era which is already part of a vanished past enables Scott to envision a stable form for that, and his own, era of transition.

Notes

¹ See Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf (New York: Basic Books, 1963), Part 1, "Language and Kinship," pp. 31-97. Like Scott, Lèvi-Strauss regards a language as "a reflection of the total culture" (p. 68), but he understands the relationship between the deep structure of culture and its manifestations differently. The primary difference between Lévi-Strauss and Scott (or his contemporaries) is that Lévi-Strauss assumes the premise of structural linguistics that the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary while Scott assumes the possibility of a "natural" relationship between signifier and signified. See Lévi-Strauss, pp. 47-51, and Thomas G. Winner, "Some Fundamental Concepts Leading to a Semiotics of Culture: An Historical Overview," in Semiotics of Culture, ed. Irene Portis Winner and Jean Umiker-Sebeok (The Hague: Mouton, 1979), pp. 75-82.

² Many Romantics and Victorians held this idea, including some, like Arnold, who admired an era other than the Middle Ages, but the most obvious representative of this view is John Ruskin who even subtitled one of his works The Political Economy of Art. While the emphasis changes as he moves from art critic to social critic, his fundamental premise, the close conjunction between culture and economy, dominates all of his writings.

³ Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, ed. A. N. Wilson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), pp. 521-33. All further references to Ivanhoe are to this edition and are cited in the text. The dedicatory epistle has drawn nearly as much serious attention as the novel itself. Graham Tulloch discusses it in relation to Scott's ideas about creating "period language," and David Brown discusses it at length as a statement of Scott's historiographical principles, but neither considers its thematic relationship to the novel itself. See Tulloch, The Language of Walter Scott: A Study of his Scottish and Period Language (London: Andre Deutsch, 1980), pp. 13-17; and Brown, Walter Scott and the Historical Imagination (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), pp. 173-94.

⁴ While I discuss this question in terms of modern semiotics, it should be noted that Templeton has no problem "translating" because, in conformity with Enlightenment historiography and Scott's use of it in his novels, his "neutral ground" guarantees meaning. See Graham McMaster, Scott and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 49-77; Francis R. Hart, Scott's Novels: The Plotting of Historic Survival (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1966), p. 182; and Brown, Walter Scott and the Historical Imagination, pp. 190, 198.

⁵ The narrator really does attempt to carry out these principles in the novel. In the footnotes, he frequently explains and translates archaic terms and manners. Scott is also adept at simulating translation, as in the translations of the condemnation of Rebecca from Norman-French and of Rebecca's message to her father from Hebrew (pp. 428-29, 432-33). Of course, while Scott pretends to translate from the old into the new, he is actually archaicizing modern English. See Tulloch, The Language of Walter Scott, chaps. 3 and 4.

⁶ This places the conflict in the context of Romantic aesthetics which defended poetry against the charges of falsehood made by philosophers from Bacon to Bentham. Templeton justifies translation on the same basis that the Romantic poet justifies imagination. For a summary of the arguments, see M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: Norton, 1958), pp. 285-97. Note that Cedric's claim that Norman poets merely "garnish" a tale combines the traditional metaphor of fiction and figurative language as inessential ornament with the analogy between language and cuisine.

⁷An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan (New York: Modern Library, 1937), pp. 22, 384-85.

⁸ See Marc Shell, Money, Language, and Thought: Literary and Philosophical Economies from the Medieval to the Modern Era (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1982), pp. 48-55.

⁹ See Shell, Money, Language, and Thought, pp. 99-100.

¹⁰ Just as languages and codes multiply in Ivanhoe, so do identities in the form of disguises: Wilfred, King Richard, Gurth, Wamba, Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Bois-Guilbert, De Bracy, and Front-de-Bœuf all adopt them. The use and abuse of disguise follows the same pattern as the use and abuse of language and the law discussed below. While King Richard and Wilfred use disguises to surprise the Normans and restore order, and Wamba, Gurth and Robin Hood employ them in an equally innocent fashion to protect themselves, the Normans use their disguises to place false blame for their deeds on the Saxon yeomen.

¹¹ On this motif, see M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: Norton, 1971), chaps. 3, 4, and 5.

¹² Enlightenment philosophers, with whom Scott was familiar, envisioned a close relationship between individual rights, the law, and property, the very stability of the law and individual rights being based upon property. Alexander Welsh discusses this relationship extensively in The Hero of the Waverley Novels (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1963), section IV; see esp. p. 106. Welsh's work has been especially helpful, and while he does not comment on Ivanhoe at length, his comments on the novel are among the most insightful. See also Brown, Walter Scott and the Historical Imagination, pp. 190-94; and McMaster, Scott and Society, pp. 46 and 60.

¹³ These ambiguities are borne out by Carlyle's reading of the novel. In Past and Present, he treats Gurth as if he never expresses any desire for his freedom and never attains it. Choosing to focus on the parallel between social relations and economic relations, he emphasizes the novel's endorsement of direct, i.e. natural, as opposed to indirect, i.e. arbitrary, relationships. The landed proprietor employs his retainers directly, as symbolized by the collars worn by Cedric's serfs; they work in his household and share his dinner with him. In modern commerce, one spends money on goods, not on supporting retainers, thus only indirectly employing tradesmen and contributing "but a very small share to the maintenance of any individual" (Smith, The Wealth of Nations, p. 390). Isaac has no choice but to hire mercenaries who fly at the signs of the danger from which they are supposed to protect him, and De Bracy's Free Companions never seem to be available when he needs them, yet Cedric's retainers are fiercely loyal.

¹⁴ Joseph E. Duncan argues that the novel finally dismisses chivalry as ineffective. This accords with my argument here, but it should be noted that its ideals are never dismissed, just as Cedric's ineffectual plans are shown to be wrong-minded while his ideals are upheld. See "The Anti-Romantic in 'Ivanhoe,'" Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 9 (1995), 293-300. For another discussion of the treatment of Richard as impractical knight, see Edgar Rosenberg, From Shylock to Svengali: Jewish Stereotypes in English Fiction (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1960), pp. 82-83.

¹⁵ See Matthew Arnold, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time," in Poetry and Criticism of Matthew Arnold, ed. A. Dwight Culler (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), pp. 243-44; and John Stuart Mill, Autobiography and Other Writings, ed. Jack Stillinger (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), p. 100. On the general tendency to see the century as an "era of transition," see Walter E. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind: 1830-1870 (New Haven and London: Published for Wellesley College by the Yale Univ. Press, 1957), pp. 1-4.