Inundations of Time: A Definition of Scott's Originality

Abstract

Between 1830 and 1930, the Waverley novels were omnipresent. It is true, of course, that the tone of their reception changed several times during this period. First, they were the latest thing, a brilliant, universally hailed spotlight on the past, then a solid appurtenance of civilization (occasionally, for that matter, traveling with voyagers to distant lands as a comforting reminder of home), then--as demonstrated by a mass of modernist fiction, itself now largely forgotten--a slightly contemptible item of juvenile instruction or interior decoration. 1 But for all this time, a century more or less, they remained omnipresent, and then--just as contempt began to be replaced by neglect or simple oblivion--they were reconceived by Georg Lukács, whose study of The Historical Novel (1937) attempted to show that Scott had indeed done something really valuable. He had invented "The Classical Historical Novel," setting a standard against which Tolstoy, for instance, could be judged.

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