Scott gathered the disparate strands of contemporary novel-writing techniques into his own hands and harnessed them to his deep interest in Scottish history and his knowledge of antiquarian lore. The technique of the omniscient narrator and the use of regional speech, localized settings, sophisticated character delineation, and romantic themes treated in a realistic manner were all combined by him into virtually a new literary form, the historical novel. britannica
Walter Scott also had the creative and technical brilliance to reassert the place of romance at the heart of a literary culture, nationally and internationally. To read Scott is to be made aware of the strong shaping force of stories in a wider culture, and in literary history. It is fitting, then, that the period in which he was so prominent has been modeled along fictional lines of special interest to readers and historians of romance. blackwellreference
Walters Scott's study hall
It was Byron, the story goes, who forced Sir Walter Scott to invent Romantic fiction
The difference between Waverly and a Gothic novel is that the setting is more than a spooky backdrop—the local people and history are crucial to the development of the story. In a sense, they are the story. This regional, folk-oriented writing, rich in quaint habits and dialect, was pioneered by Maria Edgeworth.
Walter Scott died in 1832. Most of his best fiction—Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, Ivanhoe—had been written in the decade immediately following Waverly, and his final years saw both Sir Walter’s talents and finances in decline. Yet Romantic fiction’s last flowering was still to come, close by on the barren Yorkshire heath. This is the setting for Wuthering Heights (1847), a novel about an isolated farming family with deep, inbred passions, and their struggle against the civilizing influences of the outside world. Emily Brontë could hardly have been more different from Sir Walter Scott. Solitary and obscure, she, like her character Catherine Earnshaw, spent most of her life in the isolation of rural Yorkshire, and was close only with her father, brother, and her two sisters Charlotte and Anne. And her book was a very different sort of book from Waverly. Gone is the history, the marching troops, the curious rustic customs and the Byronic hero waylaid by adventure. Wuthering Heights, with its setting of a few square miles of moors, is Romantic fiction distilled to a simple flame.
Wuthering Heights is a singular masterpiece, a wild and haunting novel that disturbs even modern readers desensitized by graphic images and cinematic blood. It represents an introspective farewell for the Romantic tradition that, even then, was fading. walter_scott
Terrific article. If one wants to understand the Brontës better, one must read at least some of Byron and Scott. These men were their mentors.
BeantwoordenVerwijderenHaving an older father and living in a remote area, they learned their writing craft from an older tradition than their contemporaries
..... Wuthering Heights, with its setting of a few square miles of moors, is Romantic fiction distilled to a simple flame.
Very true . Like an urgent message to be sent before the Romantic flame goes out .
It represents an introspective farewell for the Romantic tradition that, even then, was fading
The Romantic tradition may have been fading .
But the Brontës made sure it ended with a bang !
Offcourse I knew about their love for Scott and Byron and a long time ago I was reading about the Romantic period.
VerwijderenNow, when I start to read it again I understand The Brontes better. AS you said, they lived in the first period of the Victorian times, but in their minds they lived in another period/ world.
I feel even more sorry for Charlotte, who had to be a Victorian lady with a heart of a Byronic hero.
I feel even more sorry for Charlotte, who had to be a Victorian lady with a heart of a Byronic hero.
VerwijderenExactly. This why she was called "course " when her Byronic heart couldn't help but peek though and why the label stung her so. It was true. At least in the Victorian world she found herself in . Charlotte was both too old fashioned and too far ahead for her own times.
Charlotte lived in two very different worlds. Her inner, free Byronic world and her outer, Anglican clergyman's daughter world . It's hard to imagine spheres of more different natures.
Charlotte's genius bought them together in her books . Hence their power and success that goes on to this day and will go on ....and controversy back in her own times
But personally all Charlotte's life, beyond the Parsonage, these worlds were kept strictly apart .
Then Arthur Bell Nicholls, am amazingly solid citizen of her outer world, displayed strong Byronic traits of her inner world and put her "in a kind of shock" .
Charlotte's two worlds suddenly met, one could say, collided , on the personal level on Dec 13th 1852. She exactled the clash of the front door, but another one happened
Charlotte would never be able to marry if her true, Byronic heart was not given at least some acknowledgment. Living in the times she did , she could not ask for what she needed . But Arthur Bell Nicholls's great love gave it her without her asking.
He didn't have the fine words, but he had the raging love and wbought his own Byronic truths into the everyday world successfully. That is, Arthur did his duties fully and faithfully , yet put Haworth in an uproar and would not listen to "reason" .
All Charlotte had known before was her own policy of separation and repression or Branwell's disastrous , free mixing of the two . This was something complely diffrent
Nicholls's being able to to take over Papa's work sweeten the pot. But imo that would never be enough to cause Charlotte to go down church lane" that dim June morning " to be wed.
It was because in large measure her groom ,by example, showed Charlotte that one could mix a Byronic nature with the everyday world and find happiness. At least she knew it for a time.