The Reception and Transformation of Walter Scott's Waverley Novels: the Historical Novel's Cultural Role and Significance in the Victorian Period

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26370288
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Literature in English
• Research Institution: Aoyama Gakuin University
• Principal Investigator: MATSUI Yuko 青山学院大学, 文学部, 教授 (70265445)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 英文学 / 歴史小説 / 文化史 / ウォルター・スコット

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study examined the Victorian reception of Walter Scott’s Waverley novels and explored the cultural role of the historical novel in the 19th-century Britain. It first demonstrated the ubiquity of Scott’s works in Victorian society by listing the collected editions of the Waverley novels. Their paratexts such as lists of events and characters were also considered in terms of the educational value of the historical novel.
The pedagogical usefulness of the genre is further explored through the analysis of the prevailing use of Scott materials in Victorian school texts. The limited number of the works chosen for class study as well as ‘unliterary’ assignments attached to the text explains negative perceptions of Scott’s works during later periods. The formal closeness of history textbooks to the historical novel could similarly undermine the genre’s literary value. Meanwhile, Scott literary tourism well illustrates the generic feature and cultural force of the historical novel.

Free Research Field

英文学