Possible Scotlands : Walter Scott and the story of tomorrow
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Possible Scotlands : Walter Scott and the story of tomorrow
Oxford University Press, 2005
1st ed
- : hbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
No thanks to Walter Scott, Scotland has at last regained its parliament. If this statement sounds extreme, it echoes the tone that criticism of Scott and his culture has taken through the twentieth century. Scott is supposed to have provided stories of the past that allowed his country no future-that pushed it "out of history." Scotland has become a place so absorbed in nostalgia that it could not construct a politics for a changing world.
Possible Scotlands disagrees. It argues that the tales Scott told, however romanticized, also provided for a national future. They do not tell the story of a Scotland lost in time and lacking value. Instead they open up a narrative space where the nation is always imaginable. This book reads across Scott's complex characters and plots, his many personae, his interventions in his nation's nineteenth-century politics, to reveal the author as an energetic producer of literary and national
culture working to prevent a simple or singular message. Indeed, Scott invites readers into his texts to develop multiple and forward-looking interpretations of a Scotland always in formation. Scott's texts and his nation are alive in their constant retelling. Scott was an author for Scotland's new
times
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction: The Problem of Walter Scott Waverly and Guy Mannering
- 2. Circulating Scotlands The Antiquary, The Tale of Old Morality, The Heart of Midlothian
- 3. Chancing Scotland The Fortunes of Nigel and the King's visit
- 4. Performing Other/Wise the Talisman and Woodstock
- 5. Telling Over alachi Malagrowther and Chrystal Chroftangry
- 6. Conclusion: Making Meaning Beyond the Ending Castle Dangerous and Scott's Last Words
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