GOTHIC DIMENSIONS OF CAPITALISM
IN SIR WALTER SCOTT'S HISTORICAL FICTION
Open Access
Author:
Slagis, Claire O'Leary
Area of Honors:
English
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Dr. Robert Lawrence Caserio Jr., Thesis Supervisor Dr. Robert Lawrence Caserio Jr., Thesis Supervisor Janet Wynne Lyon, Thesis Honors Advisor Robert Lougy, Faculty Reader
Keywords:
gothic capitalism scott
Abstract:
This thesis traces Sir Walter Scott's development across five novels that are each set in a different stage of an historical revolution from pre-capitalist to capitalist society: The Monastery (1820), Kenilworth (1821), Old Mortality (1816), Chronicles of the Cannongate (1827), and Waverley (1814). My intention is to prove that Scott defines the revolution as not only one with religious foundations but also as one with economic foundations. In The Historical Novel (English translation, 1962), György Lukaìcs introduces the fact that “we must admire… Scott's extraordinary realistic presentation of history, his ability to translate these new elements of economic and social change into human fates.” My thesis explains how economic change is the driving force of Scott's historical novels, deciding the fates of the characters and shaping how Scott judges the country's present. Scott uses characteristics of the Gothic literary genre (in alliance with romance) to represent the economic change as a force which, as Marx and Engels would say, “[sweeps away] all fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices” and, more importantly, “[melts] all that is solid… into air.”
