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Cargando... The Laird of Abbotsford: A View of Sir Walter Scottpor A. N. Wilson
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. This is an engaging and lively survey of Sir Walter Scott's work in the context of his life. Wilson is modest about his aims: "Every so often, someone publishes a book suggesting we have another look at Scott. ... [T]he huge majority of intelligent readers have another go at starting The Heart of Midlothian and then go back to Dickens or Trollope or D.H. Lawrence." (ch.I). Nevertheless, he manages to communicate very well why he, personally, enjoys Scott, and why he believes that those of us who approve of Scott in theory but don't actually read him very often should make the effort. The treatment is broadly chronological, but the novels are also grouped thematically, so that, for example, Scott's religious views can be discussed in one place, and his Toryism in another. As well as discussing Scott's relation to contemporaries like Byron, Lewis and Hogg, Wilson also goes into his influences, and the way his novels and poems were received. As you would expect, there are extensive digressions concerning Scott's influence on Pusey, Newman and Pugin (although it might have been interesting to know more about the incident when Dr Pusey fell into the Tweed), but thankfully not too much on Scott's influence on Victorian kitsch. Wilson defends Scott against Marxist critics like Lukacs, who argued that the Tory landowner and magistrate was unconsciously channelling a liberal humanist genius, by suggesting that in Scott what you see is what you get: that the superficial is the level at which his genius operates. In Wilson's view, the ethical position of the novels is entirely consistent with a Tory hatred of disturbances to the civil order, but it is an enlightened, humanist kind of Toryism (Scott was born into the tail end of the Edinburgh enlightenment: David Hume died when Scott was five years old). sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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In this subtle, entertaining and frequently provocative biography, A. N. Wilson recaptures the freshness of Walter Scott as he appeared to his contemporaries. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)823.7Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Early 19th century 1800-37Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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Apart fom looking at some of his poetry, reading Ivanhoe as a student and dabbling (without much application) in the Waverley sequence, I haven't had much to do with Scott since. Indeed, I picked up this biography on holiday in Scotland more from a lack of alternative reading material on offer than from a desire to learn more about Scott..
However, learn I certainly did. Wilson's book is immensely informative but he maintains a light and engaging touch, giving the reader a sense of his own enthusiasm for Scott and his works, and I shall definitely be revisiting Waverley very shortly.
What struck me most vividly about Scott (and this would be equally true of Dickens later in the nineteenth century) was his sheer productivity. Scott didn't publish anything until he was thirty-one, and heathen went on to produce reams and reams of verse (lyric and epic) and some thirty novels, while not neglecting his professional legal duties form his "main" career. Wilson pays due homage to all this while never falling prey to the turgidity so often (unfairly) ascribed to Scott himself.
I finished reading this book with that particular sense of pleasure that comes from having embarked on a venture with low expectations but finding them hugely surpassed! ( )