Historical Novel

Literary Forms and Uses

• The origins of the British Historical fiction can be
located in the medieval romances of chivalry.

• But a convenient generic starting point is Horace

Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764).

• Walter Scott established the historical novel as a

dominant style of fiction by publishing his Waverley
Novels.

• He wrote historical novels with great haste rapidity.

• His novel known as the Waverley Novels, consist of twenty
five novels.

• It is arranged in historical order they are as follows.

• Eleventh century, Count Robert of Paris;

• Twelfth century, The Bethrothed, The Talisman, Ivanhoe;

• Fourteenth century ,Castle Dangerous;

• Fifteenth Century, The Fair Maid of Perth, Quentin Durward,

nine of Geierstein;

• Sixteenth century, The Monastery, The About, Kenilworth,

Death of the Laird’s Jock; Seventeenth
• Seventeenth Century , The Fortunes of Nigel, A
Legend of Montrose, Woodstock, Peveril of the Peak,
Old Morality, The Bride of Lammermoor, The Pirate

• Eighteenth Century, My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror. The

Black Dwarf, Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian,
Waverley Redgauntlet, Guy Mannering, The Highland
Widow, The Surgeon’s Daughter, The Tapasteried
Chamber, The Two Drovers, The Antiquary;

• Nineteenth Century, St Roman’s Well

• Features of His Novel

• Historical Realism

• Few novelists before Scott had attempted to write historical

fiction. Horace Walpole Clara Reeve and Mrs. Radcliffe -
made no attempt to incorporate historical realism.

• Scott combined the elements of real life with elements of

wonder from old romance and created a new synthesis of
historical prose romance.

• What Richardson, Fielding and Smollett had done in holding a

mirror up to the eighteenth century way of life Scott did for the
remote centuries of which his contemporaries knew nothing.
• His very first novel Waverley is slight attempt at a sketch
of ancient Scottish manners.

• He had a comprehensive knowledge of the Scottish past.

• Old Mortality depicts the troubled times of Charles II. It is

a historical monument of the finest pictures of the past its
men its ideas and manners.

• In Ivanhoe Scott took up England as his scene, and

reconstructed not the eighteenth century he knew but the
middle ages.

• Scott’s treatment of history is not entirely accurate. He

often takes liberties with facts and alters them.
• Scott’s novels are on a vast scale covering a wide range of
action

• They are concerned with public rather than with the private
interest.

• The element of lobe in his novels is generally pale and feeble

• He magnificently portrayed the strife and passions of big

parties.

• In his novels scene is an essential element in the action.

• He vividly creates the very atmosphere of the place and

makes the readers feel the presence of its moors and
mountains.