Chivalry and Romance: Scott's Medieval Novels

Author(s): Alice Chandler

Source: Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Spring, 1975), pp. 185-200
Published by: Boston University
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 Chivalry and Romance: Scott's Medieval Novels
ALICE CHANDLER

ONE of the recurrent elements in theWaverley Novels is the

distinction Scott makes between the Highlands and the Low
lands. To enter the Highlands, as one critic has put it, is to
cross a border "between what is and what might be, between reality
and romance, between selfish causes and lost causes, the calculating
present and the impulsive past."1 This analysis of the Scottish novels
can also be applied to the medieval novels, except that in them there
is no return at the end to ordinary life.While the medieval tales are
far from themerely decorative pageantry that they have been popularly
taken to be, most of the action does transpire on the far side of the
border between the real and the unreal, in a world that sometimes

verges on the mythic and allegorical. In the Scottish novels the pro
tagonist eventually turns his back on the heroic archaism of theHigh
lands and returns to actuality with a deepened sense of himself. But
in the world of Scott's medieval fiction, there is no such obvious re
crossing, no such reintegration with life as it really is. For these books
Wylie Sypher's assertion that "dreaming of the middle ages" can be
"one of the shortest ways out of Manchester" not be a
may complete
but it is at least an
summation, apposite epigram.2
It is this very quality of apparent wish-fulfillment, however tempered
an that made Scott's medieval so
by underlying realism, panorama
popular for so long and that probably accounts for the low critical
esteem in which the chivalric novels are currently held. Given a desire
to restore Scott's laurels in an unheroic the
period, tendency among
recent critics has been to normalize his work and to emphasize the
prudential, the rational, and the sociologically realistic elements in
Scott's works at the expense of the romantic or affective. David Daiches

expresses the prevailing view when he states that Scott's masterpieces

all deal with Scottish manners and history. Reflecting a persistent dis
comfiture with the medieval fiction, he claims that Scott's best novels
are anti-romantic since show that ...
they "heroic action is, in the last

1. Coleman O. Parsons, Witchcraft and Demonology in Scott's Fiction

(Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1964), p. 264.
2. Wylie Sypher, Rococo to Cubism in Art and Literature (New York:
Random House, 1960), p. 103.

SiR, 14 (Spring 1975) 185

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 186 ALICE CHANDLER

analysis, neither heroic nor useful."3 Neither the admirable studies of

Francis Hart nor of Edgar Johnson really dissent from this view. Hart,
for example, declines to believe that the anti-utilitarian preface to
Quentin Durward does justice to the complexity of Scott's views, while
Johnson claims that the rational and pragmatic Saladin is the real hero
of The Talisman* Such views find pointed expression in J. E. Duncan's
article on "The Anti-Romantic in Ivanhoe" which salvages the novel
for twentieth-century consumption by giving it an ironist interpretation
and declaring that it is essentially anti-chivalric.5
As long as the novels are judged by purely realistic canons, theywill
certainly be found wanting. The medieval novels are not entirely
lacking in the presentation of complex characters nor in a certain
graininess of texture. The imprint of Scott's "realism" can be traced
in the medieval novels, just as there are purely "romantic" portions
to the Scottish ones. But the proportioning is different. Despite an
occasional psychological portrait like that of Louis XI in Quentin
Durward, the medieval novels do not contain the inner struggle and
maturation of personality or the stenographic transcript of society that
make Scott's of a Deans or Darsie Latimer and
presentation Jeanie
their worlds so Nor is there an sense of historical
compelling. overriding
or tragic fatality such as often informs the Scottish books. But what if
instead of being judged against the grain of instinctive response, their
wish-fulfilling qualities are used for them, not against them? What if
are considered not as novels, but romances?a term that in
they
Scott's time implied narratives that were idealizing, symbolic, and
affective, vaguely descended from the chivalric fables of the past and
still retaining something of their passion and mystery? To do so may
an on certain elements in the but there
require overemphasis novels,
is at least the justification that Scott himself shared in this sense of
genre, believing that the "old wild fictions" awakened the fancy,
elevated the disposition, and created a higher form of character than
a mundane existence could afford.6 He thought that the novel was

3. David Daiches, Literary Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1956),

p. 88.
4. Francis R. Hart, Scott's Novels: The Plotting of Historic Survival
(Charlottesville, Va.: The University Press of Virginia, 1966), pp. 225-226.
Edgar Johnson, Sir Walter Scott: The Great Unknown (New York: Macmillan,
1970) n, 937.
5. J. E. Duncan, "The Anti-Romantic in Ivanhoe," Nineteenth-Century
Fiction, 9 (1955), 293-300.
6. Sir Walter Scott, The Letters of Sir Walter Scott, ed. Sir Herbert J. C.
Grierson (London: Constable and Co., 1932-37), vn, 302.

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 SCOTT'S MEDIEVAL NOVELS 187

"the legitimate child of romance" and praised it for bringing its

of the human heart ... to the service of honour and
"knowledge
virtue."7 Judged by such aesthetic criteria, Scott's own medieval
romances (for that iswhat theymostly are) reveal surprising strengths:
a consistent ideal of human conduct and a startling inventiveness of
technique.

To understand themedieval novels it is necessary to recall what the

middle ages stood for in Scott's time. Despite some lingering hostility
to the Dark Ages, the medieval revival was well under way by the
time Scott was born and had diffused itself into a variety of artistic
and antiquarian enthusiasms. As manifested in some of the popular
histories of the late eighteenth century, the rehabilitation of themiddle
ages had resulted in a rather stylized view of the past, one that had
little to do with themiddle ages as they really were and a great deal
to do with the emerging values of primitivism, freedom, and heroic
individualism.
For most of the pro-medieval historians the story of themiddle ages
began in the forests of Germany, or Scandinavia, or perhaps Britain,
Wales, or Ireland?any place where Germanic or Celtic tribes could
be discerned. They were a "great and divine
People," according to
their advocates, who lived simply and frugally, were hospitable to
strangers, and were uncorrupted by the desire for riches. Intelligent,
imaginative, proud, theywere "strangers to duplicity and malignity of
spirit" and passionately devoted to liberty.8
It was to these "forests of Germany" that the historians traced the
origins of chivalry. Although earlier writers had ridiculed the "enthusi
asm" of knight-errantry, such historians as Robert
Henry, Gilbert
Stuart, or even Sharon Turner, tended to idealize the chivalric code. Its
characteristics were said to be
leading "valour, humanity, courtesy,
honour . . . . . . a to
justice, religion [and] scrupulous adherence
truth."9While admitting the brutality of themiddle ages, most of these
historians thought that the period was redeemed
by the chivalric
insistence on the sanctity of women and the inviolable
rights of the
innocent and the weak.

7. Quarterly Review, 14 189.

(1815),
8. Robert The
Henry, History of Great Britain, 4th ed. (London, 1805),
ii, 299.
9. William The
Russell, History of Modern Europe, new ed. (London,
1822), i, 193-94.

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 188 ALICE CHANDLER

These historians, however, clearly differentiated between the early

middle ages and the late. In the early period, the binding principle of
feudal was seen as affection rather than The con
society compulsion.
nection between superior and vassal was believed to be "warm and
generous," and the feudal chiefs were powerful not so much by their
military forces as by the attachment and loyalty of their retainers. But
the later middle ages changed all this. "Property," as one historian
wrote, was "unfolded in all its relations."10 was substituted for
Money
loyalty, and the profit-motive separated forever the interests of the
lord and his subject. By the end of themiddle ages, mercenary armies
had taken the place of vassals, and the "liberty and happiness" of the
earlier period was replaced by the "rapacity and savageness" of a
corrupted era.11

In their tripartite division of medieval society into its Germanic,

chivalric, and decadent phases, these pre-Romantic historians managed
tomaintain their belief in progress by seeing the decline of feudalism
as paving the way for a new and better form of government. Many of
them also believed that historical change revealed the hand of Provi
dence. Scott's friend, Sharon Turner, though dubious about some
aspects of themiddle ages, was very certain about Providence. He often
divine interference as of and he was
postulated part history, praised
on his death for showing in all his historical works that "minute
providential agency and actual superintendence of all affairs by the
Almighty."12
In his "Essay on Chivalry" Scott echoes many of these ideas. Al
though no man of his age had read more or knew more of the actual
records of the past than Sir Walter Scott, he could not wholly avoid
reading that past as others did. If one accepts Duncan Forbes' view
in his now classical article on Scott's rationalism that he was strongly
influenced by eighteenth-century thought,13 one must also include as
part of his background such non-rationalist historians as Sharon Turner,
towhom he acknowledges indebtedness in the preface to Ivanhoe, and
Robert Henry, from whom Scott plagiarizes in "The Essay on

10. Gilbert Stuart, A View of Society in Europe, 2nd ed. (London, 1782),
p. 75.
11. Ibid., p. 80.
12. Thomas Preston Peardon, The Transition in English Historical Writing:
1760-1830 (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1933), p. 229.
13. Duncan Forbes, "The Rationalism of Sir Walter Scott," Cambridge
Journal, 7 (October, 1953), passim.

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 SCOTT'S MEDIEVAL NOVELS 189

Chivalry."14 Thus, for Scott, as for these pre-Romantic historians, the

seeds of chivalry existed in the German forests. It was chivalry, he
believed, Christianity excepted, that was the chief cause of difference
between the ancients and the moderns. Its strength lay in its combina

tion of military valor, not with a purely intellectual code, but with the
strongest passions of the human mind, its feelings of reverence and
love. Sharply critical of chivalry in practice, he could nonetheless praise
the ideal. He claimed that it operated on the "beautiful" theory that
the soldier who drew his "sword in defence of his country and its
or of the innocence of and
liberties, oppressed damsels, widows,
. .
orphans, or in support of religious rights . [was inspired in his deeds
by] a deep sense of devotion, exalting him above the advantage and
even fame which he himself might derive from victory and giving
dignity to defeat itself, as a lesson of divine chastisement and
humiliation."15
Likethe historians, Scott also believed in the theory of rise and fall.
He believed that all human institutions are bound to decay and that
chivalry so deteriorated in its later stages that it finally seemed to foster
the very vices itwas pledged to avoid. "The devotion of the
knights,"
he wrote, into love into licentious
"degenerated superstition,?their
ness,?their spirit of loyalty or of freedom into tyranny and turmoil,
?their generosity into hare-brained madness" (p. 13). Nevertheless,
despite itsfinal failure, chivalry is given a basically favorable judgment.
"Its institutions," Scott claimed, "virtuous as were in principle,
they
and honourable and generous in their must have done much
ends,
good, and prevented much evil." With poetic nostalgia, he concludes
his essay by calling chivalry "a beautiful and fantastic
piece of frost
work which has dissolved in the beams of the sun"
(p. 98).
What Scott states explicitly about the rise and fall of
chivalry and
the distinction between practice and in his is
theory essay implicit in
the novels. We can see this sense of historical most
development clearly
in Anne of Geierstein, in which
the hero successively (rather than
as in a novel like
simultaneously, Ivanhoe) experiences the three
different phases of medieval life; the primitivism of the heroic Swiss
mountaineers, the chivalry of the vanquished Lancastrians, and the

14. A sentence from

the "Essay" quoted for example, is almost iden
below,
tical with a statement
of Henry's: "But still an institution so virtuous in its
principles and so honourable in its ends must have done much and pre
good
vented many evils" {The History of Great Britain, vi, 327).
15. Sir Walter Scott, Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott (Edin
burgh, 1854), i, 20; all further references to the "Essay" are to this edition.

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190 ALICE CHANDLER

post-chivalric decay of the Burgundians and Provencals. Taken

schematically Scott's young observer?as distinguished from his more
complex-minded creator?sees freedom and simplicity in the first
society, courage and fidelity in the second, and selfishness and luxury
in the third?a perfect eighteenth-century mini-history.
Set at the intersection of historical and value as are
periods systems,
all his novels, medieval stories such as Anne
of Geierstein give Scott
the opportunity to explore theworth of various moral systems.Although
his judgment is balanced, his sympathies are clear. The central value
in all Scott's medieval romances?and the one that must win out in
the end?is what we would call altruism and what Scott reallymeant
by the term chivalry. Related to the Shaftesburian conception of the
"moral sense"?or virtue for virtue's sake?altruism is a hard term

to define, perhaps because it exists more purely in fiction than in life.

But it is this ideal of human conduct, this practice of virtue without
the necessity of reward, this risk of self for the benefit of others, this
dedication to a cause in the face of danger, that Scott's medieval
novels, stripped of their tempering complexities, ultimately assert.
Other of his books penetrate the deceptions of altruism?the fanati
the narcissisms, the that can in its
cisms, power-drives masquerade
clothes. with a more modern the Scottish
Dealing recognizably society,
and novels seem to endorse a more and realistic
English prudential
code of behavior. But in writing of the far-offworld of the middle
ages, Scott can afford to be more didactic.
Basically at issue in these books, though projected into themedieval
past, is the growing nineteenth-century conflict between utilitarian and
anti-utilitarian modes of behavior?between what Dickens so pithily
calls "looking out for number one" and a philosophy of life that
assumes there is more to conduct than mere How
ciphering. clearly
Scott sees this conflict of values and where he stands in regard to it
appear most vividly in Quentin Durward, which is organized, as are
most of the medieval romances, on the contrast between calculation

and chivalry.
In his introduction to this novel, Scott sets up a dichotomy between
the spirit of chivalry that is dying out as the story begins and the new
utilitarian morality that is superseding it. Chivalry, he asserts, is
founded upon "generosity and self-denial, of which if the world were
deprived, itwould be difficult to conceive the existence of virtue among
the human race." Its successor, the modern code of self
emerging
interest, is based on just the opposite moral principle of personal
self-indulgence. Its admittedly selfish aim, to use Scott's purposely

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 SCOTT'S MEDIEVAL NOVELS 191

Benthamite is to augment one's individual "sum of happiness."16

phrase,
King Louis, whom Scott compares to Goethe's Mephistopheles, em
bodies in himself these post-chivalric values and demonstrates their
essential and weaknesses. He is the practical in
strengths peace-keeper
an age of brawling wars. But he is also the destructive, manipulative
overreacher, who is so "purely selfish, so guiltless of entertaining any
purpose unconnected with his ambition, covetousness, and desire of
selfish enjoyment, that he almost seems an incarnation of the devil
himself, permitted to do his utmost to corrupt our ideas of honour in
its very source" by ridiculing all actions that do not lead certainly and
directly to self-gratification (31, iv-vi). Although Scott with his in
evitable fairness and dramatic vision makes Louis one of the most
fully living characters in his medieval novels?a projection on to an
unreal world of a familiar and brilliant pragmatism?Louis is an un
historical whose motives are dubious and calculations
pleasant necessity,

unpleasant.
as who was a admirer of Scott, wrote "All
But, Ruskin, great later,
endeavour to deduce rules of action from balance of expediency is in
vain. . . .No man . . . can know what will be the result to himself, or
to others, from any given line of conduct."17 Operating by expediency
and calculations, King Louis schemes, lies, and consults astrology in
order to control the future.The element that distrubs his computations
is the young soldier, Quentin whose combination of naivete,
Durward,
chivalric idealism, and native shrewdness, proves too for the
complex
at every turn. A free man moved
King by spontaneous generosity (or
at least by youthful ambition and ardor) rather than a machine
pushed
forward by pleasure and pain, Durward is both unpredictable and
unbeatable. Hardly the perfect hero of romance?somewhat too

unpolished and immature for that?he nonetheless holds fast through

out the novel to his exalted faith in his lady and his word. A wise fool
poised against a foolish wise man, it is he who saves Louis, and thereby
France, in the end.

Ivanhoe, perhaps the most "romantic" of the medieval

purely novels,
is likewise built round the contrast between the
generosity of primitive
and chivalric man and the selfishness of his successors. The
opening
scenes in the Saxon stronghold at Rotherwood show open-handed

16. Sir Walter Scott, The Waverley Novels, 48 vols. (Edinburgh, 1929-33),
31, xxv. All further references to the novels are to this edition.
17. John Ruskin, The Works ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander
of John Ruskin,
Wedderburn, Library edition (London and New York: George Allen and Long
man, 1903-1912), xvn, 28.

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 192 ALICE CHANDLER

generosity and a rude compassion formankind in the ascendant. Food

is plenteous at Cedric's Saxon board and all are welcome to share his
table (although some have less desirable seats). By contrast, the hos
pitality thatKing John offers his Saxon guests is cold and meaningless.
Sitting in their stolen castle, eating food refined out of all recognition,
these Norman representatives of the later middle ages devote their
energies to belittling their guests, the dispossessed owners of the entire
and to new ways to outwit them.
land, devising
An almost mythic contrast between selfishness and generosity dis
tinguishes the scenes at Torquilstone from the episodes in Sherwood
Forest. Torquilstone, the massive, forbidding castle of Front-de-Boeuf,

is a veritable allegory of the selfish passions. Down in the dungeons,

Front-de-Boeuf himself torments the frightened Isaac. In the chambers,
Maurice de Bracy and Brian de Bois-Guilbert threaten the innocence
of Rowena and Rebecca. And, on the towers, the demented Ulrica
sings her death-song of revenge. By comparison, despite their superficial
lawlessness, the oak glades of Sherwood are positively idyllic. Isaac's
gold is restored to him, Rebecca and Rowena are treated courteously,
and the spoils of Torquilstone are shared with a liberal hand.
The basic differences between the two codes of behavior come to a
focus in the contrasted treatment of Rebecca Ivanhoe and Bois
by
Guilbert. weak and as a woman and as a
Doubly unprotected Jewess,
Rebecca is a touchstone for chivalry. Her dialogues with Bois-Guilbert
unveil the cynical egotism beneath his Templar's cloak as he tries to
barter her virtue for her life. To his late medieval opportunism, the
Jewess counters with the chivalric code. Were he a true Christian, she
says, he would not put a price on her deliverance, but would "protect
the oppressed for the sake of charity, and not for a selfish advantage"
(17,285).
Despite its failings, the only force within the novel capable of
counteracting the dual threat of Bois-Guilbert's passionate sensuality
and "free-born reason" would seem to be the of Ivan
spirit chivalry.
hoe's defense of the chivalric code as that which "alone distinguishes
the noble from the base . . . raises us victorious over
[and which] pain,
toil, and suffering" has been attacked as naive and unrealistic.18 Scott
expresses these strictures himself in Rebecca's criticism of its more
blood-thirsty aspects. But what Ivanhoe goes on to say about chivalry
as "the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of
grievances, [and] the
curb of the power of the tyrant" (17, 109) is not wholly ironic. It is

18. Johnson, i, 738-39.

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 SCOTT'S MEDIEVAL NOVELS 193

the incipient voice of the law itself,magisterially protecting the weak

from the strong, and not very different, after all, fromAllan Fairford's
defense of the legal profession inRedgauntlet as defending "a righteous
cause with hand and purse, and [taking] the part of the poor man
against his oppressor, without fear of the consequences to himself
(35, 68). What Ivanhoe describes ismilitary courage, the only redress
available to a barbarous age. It ismore arbitrary and unreliable than
Fairford's civil courage and unquestionably subject to abuses. But for
Scott its premise is the same: the subordination of private judgment to
the welfare of society itself.

Altruism, then, or devotion in the face of risk, is the saving grace

of chivalry, in theory if not in actual fact. Like the bulwark of the law
in the modern Scott sees it as man from the conse
world, redeeming
quences of his selfishness and his passions. Although he is never very
far away from his own illusions?never for
puncturing far, example,
from criticism of King Richard's feckless knight errantry in a
tottering
is a muted counterpointing, a small,
kingdom?it dry voice almost
unheard among his grander melodies.
As Ivanhoe the of whatever its
shows, however, practice chivalry,
limitations, is only the property of the chosen few. For the mass of
men, according to Scott, the redeeming virtue is loyalty, or affection
given without hope of reward. It is related to the well-nigh savage
faithfulness of the Highland clans that he describes in his Scottish
novels and, in moderated form, is the force of social coherence that he
wished to revive in his own competitive age
through such quasi
medieval refurbishments as The Loyal Foresters. In regard to the
middle ages, Scott largely shares the belief in medieval
unity that
marked the work of earlier historians, but goes far
beyond them in
perception. Although he is never unaware of its deficiencies and con
tradictions and knows perfectly well how Cedric
really treated Gurth,
he still sees the feudal world, as
Coleridge later would, as a chain of
loyalties, in which all ranks of men from king to commoner acknowl
edge mutual ties. At the top of the scale, a knight like Ivanhoe offers
his devoir to the king; but at the bottom, and
just as significantly, a
serf likeWamba will offer up his life to save his master. The
symbol
of such
communality for Scott is the feudal feast. Its enemy (and he
can sometimes be an attractive
one) is the isolato?the gypsy, the
atheist, the who the social bond. Scott's
mercenary?those deny pa
ternalistic concept of loyalty thus taps the
wellsprings of political
order by tracing them back to
parental authority and familial ties.

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 194 ALICE CHANDLER

If a society is to be bound by loyalty, however, itmust be one in

which pledges are honored. Keeping one's word is part of the implicit
covenant of trust that men make in giving up their individual right
of self-defense to the social group. As a lawyer and man of affairs Scott
was aware of the pragmatic value of honorable conduct. As
doubtlessly
the author of romances he mocked it a little and exalted it much.
Fidelity to the truth is an important theme in all Scott's works, but it
is an especially important virtue in the medieval novels where Scott
echoes the pre-Romantic historians' on adherence
emphasis "scrupulous
to the truth" as part of the knightly code. "My word is the emblem of
my faith" (46, 19), says one of Scott's heroes, and though the hero is
none too bright, the author does not mean us to deride him. Touched
on to some degree in all his works, the meaning of honor is treated
most fully in The Betrothed, where Scott explores the rival claims of
a pragmatic attitude toward keeping faith based on a prudent self
interest and a chivalric idealism that hews to the absolute.
In
this novel the de Berengers epitomize idealism. Raymond de
Berenger, lord of a castle on theMarches, goes consciously to his death
to fulfill a foolish promise made to his Welsh enemy that he will fight
outside the natural defenses of his castle. His daughter Eveline feels
bound after his death tomaintain an equally foolish pledge tomarry
a man she does not love. In contrast to the rashness of Eveline and her

father, Scott sets up the good sense and solid, burgher integrity of
Wilkin Flammock, a Flemish weaver. Flammock is everything de
Berenger is not. Cautious and he advises rash
practical, always against
promises and unnecessary fulfillments.He tells Raymond de Berenger
not to fight upon the open field and refuses to let Eveline take her
beloved into her castle, lest people think she has taken him into her
bed as well. "This is one of your freaks," he says, "of honour and
generosity, but commend me to prudence and honesty" (37, 372-73).
But are prudence and honesty enough? Although Scott finds much
to praise in Flammock's sound judgment and integrity, he cannot
accept such bourgeois values unreservedly. Wilkin's pragmatic code is
a good one and, as Scott well knew, the inevitable code of the emerging
mercantile society that would function by contract and by bond. But
it lacks the high unselfishness of chivalry. Scott makes very clear the
differences in sensibility between the de Berengers and the Flammocks
?between those who merely fulfill their obligations and those who
go beyond them. But without idealizing either, he shows that despite
temporary setbacks, as in Ivanhoe and Quentin Durward, it is the
chivalrous who win out in the end. Raymond de Berenger is willing

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 SCOTT'S MEDIEVAL NOVELS 195

to sacrifice his life for his honor, and he is killed. But, ironically, his
willingness to keep faith even with those who would observe none with
him, ultimately leads his forces to victory, since theWelsh are trapped
and annihilated on the very ground they had chosen. "Heaven is just,"
says Eveline, when she hears that the enemy has been destroyed. And
heaven seems just, too, when at the end of the story it awards her the
lover of her choice.
The notion that the gods are just points out another characteristic
of the novels of chivalry. Walter Bagehot wrote more than a century
ago that "the world of [Scott's] fiction ... is one subject to laws of
retribution which, though not apparent on a superficial glance, are yet
in steady and consistent operation, and will be sure to work their due
effect if time is only given to them."19 In the Scottish novels, with their
emphasis on realism and historicity, such retributive justice can only
work out, if it does at all, in a very general way. But Scott's medieval
world is sufficientlyfree from historical fact to allow him the luxury of
providential solutions. If poetic justice is still not universally achieved,
it ismore frequent and more dramatic than in the Scottish books.
One way to investigate Scott's providentialism is to examine the
differences between the younger and older practitioners of chivalric
virtue. Several of the novels present two contrasted heroes?an

enthusiastic young man, who has yet to win his spurs, and a more

older man, who serves as a father In Quentin Durward,

prudent figure.
for instance, Crevecoeur, he admires the young Scotsman,
though
cannot accept what seem to him Durward's insane
young aspirations
in love and calls him a "madman" for his hopes. In Anne of Geierstein,
young Arthur argues with his father to accept the warnings of an
unknown maiden. A similar contrast between and confidence
prudence
obtains in Castle Dangerous, where Aymer de Valence urges his chief
to trust an unknown guest.

Despite their lack of caution, in the world of the medieval novels,

the young idealists seem to have an edge, as contrasted with the Scot
tish novels where youth must more frequently learn from age. Quen
tin Durward does win a fair lady, and wealth and rank besides. Sir
John de Walton imprisons the stranger, as practicality demands, and
thereby precipitates an awful chain of disasters. As for Arthur Philip
son, he, too, proves right in his youthful trust in the maiden. In
chiding his son for what he considers his chivalric romanticism, the
father, like all these supposedly wise old men, has the worst of the

19. Walter National Review

Bagehot, (April, 1858), p. 458.

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 196 ALICE CHANDLER

argument. What he called Arthur's "vain imagination" has actually

a truer of the world than his own too-cautious
given picture reasoning

(44, 367).
Indeed, the quality of faith can be added to such other characteris
tics of Scott's heroes as altruism, loyalty, and honor?faith in himself
and what can loosely be called Providence. A pagan character like
Saladin in The Talisman can believe that the universe is governed by
powers that turn good into evil and can address a hymn to the forces
of darkness. But the chivalric hero knows otherwise. He may never
express it directly, but his actions and his fate embody Scott's belief
expressed in the Journal that "there is a God, and a just God?a
judgment and a future life?and all who own so much let them act
according to the faith that is in them."20Moderated though they are
by Scott's full cognizance of human ambiguity, the medieval novels
leave little doubt that Providence, though it moves slowly, moves
justly, and that by mysterious ways it punishes the wicked and rewards
the good.

Scott resorts to a deux ex machina,

Although occasionally clumsy
as in the sudden death of Brian de Bois-Guilbert, most manifestations
of retributive justice are skillfully dovetailed into the plot. In Anne
of Geierstein, for example, theDuke of Burgundy thinks his own inte
rests will best be served by rejecting the course of honor. But by
pursuing his own advantage he actually brings about his own death.
In Quentin Durward, too, there is constant irony in the way King
Louis and his astronomer Durward's future and the way in
royal plot
which the young Scotsman fulfills the letter of the prophecies while
totally reversing their intentions.

These and a myriad of other unexpected events suggest one major

aspect of Scott's view of life, though one thatmay need to be corrected
by looking at the Scottish novels. The universe, he seems to be saying,
is more than the mere mind can realize, and
complicated reasoning
attempts to calculate the future end in disaster. Indeed, in his last
novel, Scott declares that the real purpose of art is to elucidate the
ways of Providence. An who seems very much Scott's
aged minstrel,
in Castle "God knows . . . that if I, or
spokesman, says Dangerous:
such as I, are forgetful of the finger of Providence in accomplishing
its purposes in this lower world, we have heavier blame than that of
other since we are called in the exercise of
people, perpetually upon,

20. Sir Walter Scott, The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, ed. John Guthrie Tait
(Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1950), p. 39.

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 SCOTT'S MEDIEVAL NOVELS 197

our fanciful profession, to admire the turns of fate which bring good
out of evil and which render those who think only of their own passions
and purposes the executors of the will of Heaven" (5, 347).
What of the attitude of the hero in such a world? As an important
episode in Anne of Geierstein suggests, the hero must literally make
the leap of faith. Trapped on a rock by a sudden Alpine avalanche,
Arthur Philipson finds himself "suspended between heaven and earth."
As long as he estimates his danger "by themeasure of sound sense and
reality," Arthur cannot cross the gap (45, 33 ff.). But when Anne of
a half-realistic, stretches out her
Geierstein, half-supernatural figure,
hand and gives him "heart of grace" he springs the gulf to safety.
Much of Arthur's education involves just such an act of faith. Like all
of Scott's heroes, he must overcome his naivete and learn to live
wisely
and But he must also learn to the universe on a
prudently. accept

deeper level than that of mere rationality. The events of the novel,
Scott says, served to develop both the young man's "understanding
and passions" (45, 257)?and the second quality is as important as the
first. Like all Scott's chivalric heroes, Arthur Philipson would seem to
illustrate Cardinal Newman's dictum?and Newman, rightly or wrong
ly, thought Scott responsible for the Oxford Movement?that "action
flows not from but from from
inferences, impressions?not reasonings,
but from Faith."21 The medieval novels, like all Scott's work, give
evidence that he never condoned or irre
ample ungoverned passion
sponsible action. But whatever his subliminal ironies and authorial

distancings, they also show his recognition that unselfish generosity

and heroic idealism can only be energized by feeling.

The medieval novels enhance theworld they depict.

Despite certain
tensional ironies and contradictions, they appeal not only to the reader's
desire for heroic action but to his idealized conceptions of
nobility and
justice. Subordinating freedom to order as they do, they are conceptu
ally not very different from the rest of his works, but they are far
more schematic in their
approach. Dealing with a period of time that
had already been glamorized by the historians,
they allow Scott more
freedom to express that nostalgia for chivalric values than the more
realistic underpinning of the Scottish novels will not allow him to in
dulge. Set in a period historically vague, they give freer range to his
hopefulness.

21. John Henry Cardinal Newman, Discussions and on Various

Arguments
Subjects, 2nd ed. (London, 1873), p. 304.

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 198 ALICE CHANDLER

Once their genre is recognized as what might be termed a subset of

the Waverley some characteristics but em
Novels, retaining strongly

phasizing others, certain of the difficulties surrounding the books begin

to disappear. They have been accused, for example, of superficial
characterization. As as are as novels, instead
long they regarded purely
of as romances, this is certainly true. Despite a few
complex psycholo
gical portraits, Scott's medieval stories show little to compare with the
subtle and dramatic development of character that he achieves in the
best of theWaverley Novels and few of the confrontations and renun
ciations that these novels But romance does not ask for
give strength.
psychological realism; it stylizes, instead?heightening, coloring, and
dramatizing the characters until they almost allegorically polarize such
values as and and idealism, caution and
egotism altruism, prudence
commitment. This essay has already explored the meaning of such
symbolic pairs as Ivanhoe and Bois-Guilbert, Raymond de Berenger
and Wilkin Flammock, and the young chivalric heroes and the old.
Further investigation of themedieval romances would show many other
thematic pairings and even triplings: Harry Smith and Conachar in
The Fair Maid of Perth; Coeur-de-Lion, Sir Kenneth, and Saladin in
The Talisman; and, in Count Robert of Paris, a veritable Great Chain
of Being, from bestial tiger through cynical modern man.
The plot structure of these novels is also romantically stylized. As
has been seen, Scott arranges his stories to make full use of dramatic
irony, and arranges the incidents of his plot, though theymay initially
seem fortuitous, to support his conception of providence. Many of the
medieval novels show a considerable tautness of structure. One such
structural device is the use of a symbolic episode to sum up and fore
cast the action. An excellent example is the scene at the beginning of
Quentin Durward, in which the young archer, who is described as
entering theworld with little conception of its perils, is tricked by King
Louis into fording a treacherous river and survives the danger of
crossing to threaten Louis' henchman with a drubbing. The two-page
episode sums up the remainder of the book quite as clearly as the
extended siege of Torquilstone epitomizes Ivanhoe or Arthur Philipson's
entrapment by the avalanche foreshadows all that follows.
Although some of the lastmedieval romances fall apart in structure,
most of the earlier ones are remarkably symmetrical in plot, with the
symmetry underscoring the theme. Ivanhoe, for instance, begins with
a feast scene at Cedric's estate, in which both friends and foes are
divided amongst themselves, proceeds to the open hostility of the
tournament at and then enters into the moral
Ashby-de-la-Zouche,

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 SCOTT'S MEDIEVAL NOVELS 199

ambiguity of the forest. The scenes that follow at Torquilstone are

both physically and morally central, with their confrontation between
good and evil, thrice repeated blasts of the trumpets, and references
to the Book of Job and apocalyptic destruction by fire. After that crisis
the plot retraces itself backwards towards harmony. The new scenes in
the forest show that the outlaws really live in unity, the second tour
nament at reasserts the power of the and the
Templestowe good,
concluding feast at Rotherwood shows the wicked routed and the good
men reconciled. In broad outline, the progress of the novel fromRoth
erwood to the tournament, to the forest glade, to Torquilstone, and
back to the forest glade, a tournament, and Rotherwood is not only
symmetrical but triumphant. Similar symmetrical developments, with
the action on a crucial scene, can also be observed in
pivoting single
Quentin Durward and The Talisman.
If the earlier medieval novels use symbolism and structure to rein
force Scott's historical conceptions, the last ones?Anne of Geierstein,
Count Robert of Paris, and Castle Dangerous?also use it to support
his providentialism. They do so by means of two repeated image clus
ters or motifs?the descent into the grave and restoration after loss.

In Anne of Geierstein, which Scott started in 1828, three years after

financial ruin had shattered him, there are several episodes of symbolic
descent into the grave. In one, young Arthur Philipson is immured
in a dark and narrow dungeon from which he is only rescued by a
quasi-seraphic Anne. In another, his father must a
undergo symbolic
burial. Nightmarishly clad in only his underclothes, the Earl is plunged
into a subterranean where he encounters an
chamber, inquisitorial
tribunal, which claims an with all however secret"
"acquaintance guilt,
(45, 37), and accuses him of dreadful crimes. Like his son, he is
eventually restored to life but only after a hideous foretaste of death
and judgment.
In Count Robert of Paris, however, the judgment is no
longer
Kafkaesque but providential. Released from bondage and apparent
blindness after three years of imprisonment, the victim here asserts the
justice of his punishment, stating that the Emperor who imprisoned
him was "but the agent through whom Heaven exercised a dearly
purchased right of punishing me for my manifold offenses and trans
gressions" (47, 138) and adding that his imprisonment and blindness
have shown him a "liberty far more unconstrained than this
poor
earth can afford, and a vision farmore clear than any Mount
Pisgah
on thiswretched side of the grave can
get us" (47, 149).

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200 ALICE CHANDLER

These themes of entombment, restoration, and providence appear

again in Scott's last novel, Castle Dangerous, a sad, flawed, strange

work, whose theme appears to be that of loss with honor.
major

Although it is bad scholarship to make such biographical conjectures,

it is tempting to read this novel in the light of what we know about
Scott's final years. It is not difficult to see the autobiographical ele
ments. Sir John de Walton has pledged to keep an ancient Scottish
Castle (Abbotsford, perhaps, or Scott's own honor) for a year and a
day. He has done this in deference to a promise given to the Lady
Augusta, who, like himself (and like Scott), is dedicated to the fast
dying virtues of chivalry. The castle contains a wondrous book of
ancient poetry, into which Bertram the Minstrel, another of Scott's
self-projections, is pledged to keep looking. The minstrel had thought
once during the sack of the castle (Scott's bankruptcy) that it was
time for him to take his book and go, but he has learned that the time
is not yet, that he still has a role to play in reminding others about
providence and heroism. More than any other of Scott's heroes, Sir
John de Walton falters. He quarrels with his foster son, is churlish to
Bertram theMinstrel, and almost betrays Augusta. But in spite of his
shortsightedness and error, he does hold fast to his honor. At the end
of the novel, which with it symbolic restorations of love,
brings eyesight,
and justice, Sir John can gracefully yield up the castle to its rightful
owner, The Knight of theTomb. Confused though this final narrative
is, it shows a new growth of symbolic and psychological power and an
attempt towrest triumph out of defeat. It is an appropriate final work
for an acute and subtle realist who had all his life asserted the virtues
of chivalry and the attractions of romance.

The City College

The City University of New York

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