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1815 Scott was given the honour of dining with
George, Prince Regent, who wanted to meet "the
author of Waverley" [2 ,s.280..283].
In 1819 he broke away from writing about
Scotland with
Ivanhoe
, a historical romance set in
12th-century England. It too was a runaway suc-
cess and, as he did with his first novel, he
unleashed a slew of books along the same lines.
As his fame grew during this phase of his career,
he was granted the title of baronet, becoming
Sir
Walter Scott
. At this time he organised the visit
of King George IV to Scotland, and when the
King visited Edinburgh in 1822 the spectacular
pageantry Scott had concocted to portray George
as a rather tubby reincarnation of Bonnie Prince
Charlie made tartans and kilts fashionable and
turned them into symbols of national identity Be-
ginning in 1825 he went into dire financial straits
again, as his company nearly collapsed. That he
was the author of his novels became general
knowledge at this time as well. Rather than dec-
lare bankruptcy he placed his home, Abbotsford
House, and income into a trust belonging to his
creditors, and proceeded to write his way out of
debt. He kept up his prodigious output of fiction
(as well as producing a non-fiction biography of
Napoleon Bonaparte) until 1831. By then his
health was failing, and he died at Abbotsford in
1832. Though not in the clear by then, his novels
continued to sell, and he made good his debts
from beyond the grave. He was buried in Dry-
burgh Abbey where nearby, fittingly, a large sta-
tue can be found of William Wallace- one of
Scotland's most romantic historical figures [2, s.
110..113].
From being one of the most popular nove-
lists of the 19th century, Scott suffered from a
disastrous decline in popularity after the First
World War. The tone was set early on in E.M.
Forster's classic "Aspects of the Novel" (1927),
where Scott was savaged as being a
clumsy writer
who wrote slapdash, badly plotted novels. Scott
also suffered from the rising star of Jane Austen.
Considered merely an entertaining "woman's no-
velist" in the 19th century, in the 20th Austen be-
gan to be seen as perhaps
the major English nove-
list of the first few decades of the 19th century.
As Austen's star rose, Scott's sank, although, iro-
nically, he had been one of the few male writers
of his time to recognize Austen's genius. Scott's
many flaws (ponderousness, prolixity, lack of
humor) were fundamentally out of step with Mo-
dernist sensibilities. Nevertheless, Scott was res-
ponsible for two major trends that carry on to this
day. First, he essentially invented the modern his-
torical novel; an enormous number of imitators
(and imitators of imitators) would appear in the
19th century. It is a measure of Scott's influence
that Edinburgh's
central railway station,
opened in
1854 for the North British Railway, is called the
Waverley Station. Second, his Scottish novels
followed on from James Macpherson's Ossian
cycle in rehabilitating the public perception of
Highland culture after years in the shadows fol-
lowing southern distrust of hill bandits and the
Jacobite rebellions. As enthusiastic chairman of
the Celtic Society of Edinburgh he contributed to
the reinvention of Scottish culture. It is worth
noting, however, that Scott was a Lowland Scot,
and that his re-creations of the Highlands were
more than a little fanciful. His organisation of the
visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 was
a pivotal event, leading Edinburgh tailors to
invent many "clan tartans" out of whole cloth, so
to speak. After being essentially unstudied for
many decades, a small revival of interest in
Scott's work began in the 1970s and 1980s. Ironi-
cally, postmodern tastes (which favoured dis-
continuous narratives, and the introduction of the
'first person' into works of fiction) were more fa-
vourable to Scott's work than Modernist tastes.
Despite all the flaws, Scott is now seen as an
important innovator, and a key figure in the
development of Scottish and world literature [3,
s.63..66 ]. Scott was also responsible, through a
series of pseudonymous letters published in the
Edinburgh Weekly News in 1826, for retaining
the right of Scottish banks to issue their own
banknotes, which is reflected to this day by his
continued appearance on the front of all notes is-
sued by the Bank of Scotland. Many of his works
were illustrated by his friend, William Allan.
ƏDƏBİYYAT
1.
English literature: 2001, p 335 .
2.
Baugh Albert and Cable Thomas. The history of the English Language. Upper Saddle River,
New Jersey: Prentice Hall 2002, p 488.
3.
Graeme Kennedy. “ Structure and Meaning in English” 2003