Ivanhoe

Ivanhoe by Walter Scott, 464 pages

Wilfred of Ivanhoe returns from the Crusades to an uncertain future and an unsettled England.  His proud Saxon father has disinherited him for following the lion-hearted Norman king.  His castle is occupied by a Templar who, by all rights, should be fighting in the Holy Land.  His beloved is betrothed to another.  Prince John plots to usurp the throne of his absent brother, Richard.  The forest is teeming with outlaws.  Corruption pervades both Church and State.  Yet there are heroes as well, men and women prepared to risk everything in defence of virtue.  It is time for Ivanhoe to take his place beside them.

Ivanhoe, first published anonymously in 1819, was a massive commercial success, and even more influential as a cultural phenomenon.  Although certainly a part of wider trends emerging out of Romanticism, Scott's novel was at the center of the English love affair with the Middle Ages which lasted throughout the 19th century, influencing the Gothic revival as well as the Pre-Raphaelite, Arts and Crafts, and Tractarian movements.  It is not difficult to understand why - Scott spins a tale of larger-than-life characters engaging in bold feats of adventure against a colorful backdrop, the kind of yarn that pleases audiences in any era and one which suggests the existence, somewhere or somewhen, of a higher and more noble world.  As a cultural artifact, however, it is interesting how critical Scott is of the Middle Ages, which he imagines as characterized chiefly by superstition and prejudice, and the extent to which he recasts the relations between Normans and Saxons to parallel those between Englishmen and Scots.