Walter Scott

Scottish novelist Walter Scott (1771-1832) came to fame in Europe in the early nineteenth century. He was a scholar of the literary and cultural traditions of the Scots, and incorporated a rich heritage of legends, fables, songs and ballads in his own writing. With his vast output of adventurous and complex novels (Waverley, Ivanhoe, The Bride of Lammermoor were among the most famous), he was responsible for spreading the genre known as “historical novel” in Europe, a genre in which the writer invents imaginary events and inserts them into a historically documented context. In this new genre, the eighteenth century narrative tradition of the bourgeois novel was merged with the romantic era’s deep-seated need for history (and historiography). Scott’s novels themselves touched on various eras, including the Medieval Richard the Lionheart (in Ivanhoe fighting in the Holy Land and later dealing with the strife between the Saxons and Normans), the sixteenth century with Elizabeth and Mary Stuart, and the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His works influenced a whole generation of Italian novelists, including Grossi, D’Azeglio, Cantù and Guerrazzi. Scott’s name occurs several times in Manzoni’s letters and theoretical writings, and again in the correspondence with Fauriel and letters to Gaetano Cattaneo (who collaborated in the teamwork on the first draft of the novel). While at Brusuglio, Manzoni asked his librarian friend to obtain Scott’s works for him. He also requested the French versions of The Pirate and The Bride of Lammermoor (whose French title, La Fiancée, resembles his future Promessi Sposi). Manzoni’s interest in Scott’s novels (like his interest in Don Quixote and the seventeenth century writers) grew while he was writing his novel, indicating a change in his initial negative judgement of Ivanhoe, which he had re-read several times, with Scott’s popular historical novel now providing input for his Fermo e Lucia “workshop”.