Walter Scott's Books: Reading the Waverley Novels

ISBN-13: 9780415789684 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 234 str.

J. H. Alexander

Opis

Scott's Books is an approachable introduction to the Waverley Novels. It will be of interest to those studying Scottish Literature, Romanticism, the works of Sir Walter Scott. Drawing on substantial research in Scott's intertextual sources, it offers a fresh approach to the existing readings where the thematic and theoretical are the norm. Avoiding jargon, and moving briskly, it tackles the vexed question of Scott's 'circumbendibus' style head on, suggesting that it is actually one of the most exciting aspects of his fiction: indeed, what Ian Duncan has called the 'elaborately literary narrative', at first sight a barrier, is in a sense what the novels are primarily 'about'.

The book aims to show how inventive, witty, and entertaining Scott's richly allusive style is; how he keeps his varied readership on board with his own inexhaustible variety; and how he allows proponents of a wide range of positions to have their say, using a detached, ironic, but never cynical narrative voice to undermine the more rigid and inhumane rhetoric.

Spis treści

Acknowledgments. Abbreviations. Introduction.Chapter 1: Resources. Chapter 2: Style. Chapter 3: Strategies. Chapter 4: Mottoes. Envoi. Notes. Index.

O autorze

Dr. John Huston (Ian) Alexander is an honoray fellow of the Association for Scottish Literary studies and taught in the Depeartment of English at the University of Aberdeen.