Open AccessHistorical Fiction as a Mixture of History and Romance: Towards the Genre Definition of the Historical Novel
Author(s) -
Ladislav Nagy
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
prague journal of english studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2336-2685
pISSN - 1804-8722
DOI - 10.2478/pjes-2014-0014
Subject(s) - romance , literature , politics , conservatism , political radicalism , class (philosophy) , philosophy , epistemology , history , sociology , art , law , political science
This article focuses on Walter Scott’s Waverley and its classification as the founding text of the historical novel by Georg Lukacs. The author attempts to show that Lukacs takes Scott too much at his word and posits Waverley in the tradition of the English historical novel as it developed from Defoe and Fielding, while neglecting the close ties that Waverley has with marginalized genres such as romance. The author also argues that rather than being an expression of class consciousness, Waverley is an attempt to justify a certain change in political attitude, from radicalism to conservatis