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Sir Walter Scott

A Lecture at the Sorbonne

by W. P. Ker

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Pages: 14

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About this book

A performance of Ivanhoe in Paris gives W. P. Ker his starting point for exploring how Walter Scott's fiction travelled beyond Scotland. Delivered at the Sorbonne in May 1919, this lecture considers the apparent puzzle of novels steeped in local speech and customs winning readers abroad. Ker draws on Stendhal and Balzac as he examines Scott's historical settings, comic dialogue and range of characters.

The essay also traces Scott's literary beginnings through the study of history and legend, the collection of Border ballads and experiments inspired by German verse. Ker connects this preparatory work with The Lay of the Last Minstrel and considers the attraction of supernatural themes. Readers interested in how historical fiction works will find an argument about the relationship between descriptive detail and character, alongside an account of how reading, collecting and editing helped shape a writer's imagination.