Sir Walter Scott's Contributions to the English Vocabulary

PMLA ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-210
Author(s):  
Paul Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Sir Walter Scott ◽  
Waverley Novels ◽  
Edinburgh Review ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Walter Scott

It is rather surprising that the subject of Scott's influence on the English vocabulary, a subject which has excited the interest of many students of language, has not heretofore been carefully examined. That such an influence existed became apparent soon after Scott achieved popularity. Francis Jeffrey, in his review of Marmion in the Edinburgh Review of April 1808, remarks: “His genius, seconded by the omnipotence of fashion, has brought chivalry again into temporary favor. Fine ladies and gentlemen now talk indeed of donjons, keeps, tabards, scutcheons, tressures, caps of maintenance, portcullises, wimples, and we know not what besides … ” This faintly petulant tone pervades the early remarks on Scott's contributions to the language. When the Waverley Novels appeared there seems to have been in the reviews considerable displeasure at the abundant intermixture of Lowland Scottish dialect, whence some words now very current have come to us. When The Monastery was published, a word-minded reviewer used one of Scott's innovations to solve to his own satisfaction the mystery of the Author of Waverley: “I believe that the author of ‘The Monastery’ and ‘Waverley’ has hitherto kept himself concealed, although these Works and several others … are attributed … to Sir Walter Scott, an opinion which is strengthened by the liberal employment in them of that feeble expression ‘he undid,‘ which so frequently disgraces the most beautiful passages in the Poems he avows.”

The Ancestors of Jonathan Oldbuck

Antiquity ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 29 (115) ◽  
pp. 150-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Piggott
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Sir Walter Scott ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Points Of Interest ◽  
Waverley Novels ◽  
Walter Scott ◽  
Andrew Lang

Sir Walter Scott ’, Andrew Lang once remarked, ‘ entered literature through the ruined gateway of archaeology ’. The influence of Scott’s poetry, and of the Waverley Novels, upon the growing antiquarian and romantic taste of the early 19th century is a commonplace which needs no enlargement here, but it should have a particular interest to us as Fellows of a Society founded for the study of Scottish antiquities when young Walter was nine years old, and to which he was elected in 1796. That one of his novels should be called The Antiquary is no mere chance, and in Jonathan Oldbuck of Monkbarns, who plays the title-r6le, Scott produced a character whom he acknowledged as in part a humorous caricature of himself. As a crumbling pilaster, or mouldering gargoyle, of Lang's ruined gateway, I should like tonight to direct your attention to The Antiquary’s, and The Shirra’s, archaeological ancestors : what was the climate of antiquarian thought in which Scott had been brought up and how is it reflected in his work ? I do not promise anything new in this brief enquiry, but there are points of interest which may not have been brought together before.

The Life of Sir Walter Scott by John Macrone

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sir Walter Scott ◽  
Waverley Novels ◽  
Walter Scott ◽  
First Time

John Macrone (1809-1837), Dickens's first publisher, was also Scott's first biographer. His unfinished life of Scott, filled with unique anecdotes and sidelights on the reception of the Waverley Novels, is here published for the first time, with an introduction which covers his career and personality in detail.

5. On the Fairy Stones found in the Elwand Water near Melrose

1866 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 567-572
Author(s):  
David Brewster
Keyword(s):  
Sir Walter Scott ◽  
Know How ◽  
Waverley Novels ◽  
Walter Scott

On the banks of the Elwand Water, which runs into the Tweed, about two miles above Melrose, there is a picturesque glen called the Fairy Dean, which has become a favourite place of resort, from its association with the incidents in “The Monastery” by Sir Walter Scott. It has acquired an interest of a different kind from certain mineral concretions which have received the name of Fairy Stones, from their being found in that part of the rivulet which runs through the Fairy Dean.When the Waverley Novels were not acknowledged by their author, facts or incidents to which they referred, were always welcome subjects of conversation at Abbotsford; and on one occasion when I happened to mention that singular stones were found in the Fairy Dean, Sir Walter Scott expressed a desire to see them, and to know how they were formed.

Sir Walter Scott, the Angel of Hadley, and American Historical Fiction

1983 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Dekker
Keyword(s):  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Sir Walter Scott ◽  
The Self ◽  
American Fiction ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Waverley Novels ◽  
Walter Scott ◽  
Home Territory

From 1815 until about 1840 Sir Walter Scott was America's favorite novelist and much the most important model for her own budding fictionalists – Irving, Cooper, Paulding, Simms, Kennedy, Hawthorne, and others. Yet although fairly accurate estimates of Scott's American sales and circulation have been available for several decades, our understanding of his impact on American fiction has made only modest advances since the 1930s. While echoes of the Waverley novels can be discovered everywhere in American Romantic fiction, usually the louder they sound the more they signal merely the borrower's failure of inspiration or nerve. Scott's example was most fruitful where it was comparatively unobtrusive – partly because the best writers were best able thoroughly to adapt Scott's European scenes, characters, and conflicts to American experience, but also because at its best Scott's influence was of the self-effacing kind that helped Cooper, Hawthorne, and their contemporaries find their own true bent as American writers.On one occasion, however, Scott provoked a more revealing response by invading American home territory.

scholarly journals XV. A Reply to Mr. Tytler's “Historical Remarks on the Death of Richard the Second:” by Thomas Amyot, Esq. F.R.S., Treasurer, in a Letter addressed to Henry Ellis, Esq. F.R.S., Secretary

Archaeologia ◽  
1831 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 277-298
Author(s):  
Thomas Amyot
Keyword(s):  
Sir Walter Scott ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Walter Scott ◽  
Historical Remarks ◽  
The One

In an Enquiry which I addressed to you some years ago, concerning the death of Richard the Second, I took occasion to advert to the rumours prevalent after the date usually assigned to that event, relative to his supposed escape into Scotland, and his death and burial at Stirling. The story on which these rumours were founded, and to which no credit had been given by any English historian of established reputation, has lately been revived, and its truth defended with much plausibility and ingenuity, by Mr. Fraser Tytler, in an elaborate Dissertation subjoined to the third volume of his valuable History of Scotland. The name and authority of the writer would be sufficient to excite attention to his statements, even if they had not already attracted the notice of two of the most distinguished of his countrymen, though with different results as to the impression produced on them. Sir Walter Scott, on the one hand, has fully avowed his belief in the relation, while on the other, Sir James Mackintosh has, with equal decision, expressed his dissent from it. Had it fallen within the plan of the latter eminent person to state the reasons for his adherence to the common narrative more in detail, and with reference to the authorities on which they were grounded, any further attempt on my part to investigate the subject would have been superfluous. But, as the case now stands, I may be permitted to offer a more circumstantial reply to Mr. Tytler's arguments, bearing in mind the courtesy he has uniformly shown in his references to my former observations.

The Chapter-Tags in the Waverley Novels

PMLA ◽  
1930 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 1140-1149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom B. Haber
Keyword(s):  
Sir Walter Scott ◽  
Waverley Novels ◽  
Walter Scott

When Sir Walter Scott, with his friend and publisher John Ballantyne at his shoulder, was adding his chapter-tags to the proofsheets of his third novel, The Antiquary (1816), he came to a halt at one chapter for which he wanted some lines from Beaumont and Fletcher. Ballantyne undertook the task of finding the passage. Awaiting for some time the discovery of the verses he wished, Scott at length exclaimed, “Hang it, Johnnie, I believe I can make a motto sooner than you will find one.” He did so, and thus began his habit of calling upon his invention when memory failed, producing throughout the remainder of the Waverley Novels numerous chapter-headings ascribed “Anonymous,” “Old Play,” etc., which Lockhart calls “some of the most exquisite verses that ever flowed from his pen.” Of “Old Play” captions there are 94; “Old Ballad” 26—mostly Scott's free-hand alterations; “Old Song” 12; “Anonymous” 29; and unsigned mottoes 10. One of the best of the “Old Play” fabrications occurs at the head of chapter xxix of Anne of Geierstein, describing the good king René of Provence;—in reality, it may be called Scott's own epitaph:A mirthful man he was—the snows of ageFell, but they did not chill him. GaietyEven in life's closing touched his teeming brainWith such wild visions as the setting sunRaises in front of some hoar glacier,Painting the bleak ice with a thousand hues.—Old Play

The Genius of Old Romance

2020 ◽  
pp. 263-308
Author(s):  
Helen Moore
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Mary Shelley ◽  
Sir Walter Scott ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
Detailed Consideration ◽  
Robert Southey ◽  
Historical Authenticity ◽  
Edinburgh Review ◽  
Detailed Assessment ◽  
Walter Scott

In 1803 two new translations of Amadis were published: from French, by W. S. Rose, and from Spanish, by Robert Southey. It was through Southey’s editions of Amadis and Palmerin (1807), another Spanish romance, that Keats, Coleridge, Mary Shelley, and Hazlitt gained their knowledge of the genre. This chapter undertakes the first detailed consideration of Southey’s Amadis and demonstrates that it was heavily dependent upon Anthony Munday’s translation, to an extent not perceived at the time by the critics who praised Southey’s seemingly authentic Elizabethan diction. The translations of Southey and Rose were treated to a detailed assessment by Sir Walter Scott in the Edinburgh Review (1803) and exerted a considerable influence on Scott’s knowledge of medieval literary history and on his novels. The central themes of this chapter are the Romantic preoccupation with the medieval and Elizabethan periods, historical authenticity, and the recreation of the literary past.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document