Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, published in 1819 as one of the earliest historical novels in the English language, remains a classic tale of romance and high adventure, of knights, kings, brigands, and ladies acting under the impulse of love and the sway of war in medieval times. But Ivanhoe's staying power relies less on its capacity to entertain (though it does) and to convey historical fact (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't) than on its masterful portrayal of an inescapable force in the modern world: change. Scott's spirited retelling of the struggle for power between the Saxons and the Normans in twelfth-century England can be read as the unceasing struggle between old and young, past and present, as one generation is compelled to yield to the next. Scott uses his gift for characterization to center his narrative on the relation of the individual - the young Ivanhoe - to the shifting dynamic of history. Paul deGategno argues that this focus renders slavish attention to historical detail - the lack of which has been one of Ivanhoe's few but persistent sources of criticism - less significant as Scott pursues a greater, more universal truth. Scott himself (1771-1832) lived during the Scottish Enlightenment - a period in which his native Scotland was deeply stirred by change, in which advances in agriculture, industry, and commerce made possible economic and social growth for the lower and middle classes.

Inventory: Single copy, entry 327; recorded quantity 1; damaged N/A