The Reception of Sir Walter Scott in Europe

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) had an immense impact throughout Europe. His historical fiction, which brought the ideas of Enlightenment to bear on the novel, created for the first time a sense of the past as a place where people thought, felt and dressed differently. His writing influenced Balzac, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dumas, Pushkin and many others; and Scott's interpretation of history was seized on by Romantic nationalists, particularly in Eastern Europe. This book gives for the first time a comprehensive account of the impact of Scott in Europe, from the early and highly influential translations of Defauconpret in France to the continued politicization and censorship of the novels in modern East Germany and Franco's Spain. Generic chapters examine Scott's presence in art and opera, two cultural forms which were deeply affected by his novels. This exciting collection of essays by an international team of leading scholars demonstrates the depth of Scott's impact on European translation, fiction and culture from 1814 to the present. It will be an indispensable research resource for Romanticists everywhere.