Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott — Medieval Revival & Impact

Ivanhoe — Sir Walter Scott and Medieval Revival

Ivanhoe is a historical novel written by Sir Walter Scott. It was first published in 1820 in three volumes. It has proved to be one of the best-known and most influential of Scott's novels. Ivanhoe renewed interest in the Middle Ages, being the first of a series of historic and epic novels that followed.

Intention and Historical Critique

It is meant to please, not to instruct, and is more an act of imagination than one of research. However, Ivanhoe does make some 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 idealized, romantic view of Richard the Lionheart that was popular when Scott wrote the book.

Fiction, Heroism and Accuracy

Scott's formula for the historical novel was, without doubt, an innovation that became a pattern for those who followed him. His story is pure fiction and his hero is imaginary. For example, it is Ivanhoe who is the hero, not Richard Coeur de Lion; the setting is as authentic as possible, and many of the events of history are presented with considerable accuracy.

Style and Cultural Impact

Scott captured the spirit of the age: he imitated the speech, the rude humor, and the customs, reconstructing a past age until it became a living present. He did not go deeply into the causes of historical events, just as he did not probe deeply into spiritualities or men's inner thoughts, but he described in vivid detail and told a whoppingly good story. In Ivanhoe he was not always accurate, but he did more for the medieval era historically than almost anyone else to make it part of the body of knowledge.

Literary Significance

Sir Walter Scott must be remembered not only as a prominent narrator of the late 18th- and early 19th-century literary movement, but also as one of the shaping forces in emerging modern English literature. He was among the first to break literary barriers and to popularize fiction among the public.

Academic Perspective

As a professor in the Department of English, Monash University, explains in his work titled Ivanhoe and the Making of Britain:

"The dramatic nature of Scott's writing liberates not only the past from its parchment, but requires an engagement with the present. In our seat in this theatre of history we can respond in many ways to the elements deployed in Scott's exciting and sometimes infuriating text. No matter what these responses are, history is being made in Ivanhoe, the past itself brought to bear on our imagination of, for example, nationhood. As such it would be a brave prophet who would deny its relevance to the world of the 1990s."