130 Years
Scott's Wandering Tales
On Thursday 15th October 2020 our Annual Joint Lecture, hosted in conjunction with the English Department at the University of Edinburgh was given online.
Dr Daniel Cook is an Associate Dean and Reader in English Literature at the University of Dundee. He is the author of Walter Scott and Short Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), Reading Swift’s Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and Thomas Chatterton and Neglected Genius, 1760-1830 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). His recent books include Scottish Poetry, 1730-1830 (Oxford University Press, 2023), Gulliver’s Travels: The Norton Library (W. W. Norton and Company, 2023), The Cambridge Companion to Gulliver’s Travels (Cambridge University Press, 2023; with Nicholas Seager), and Austen After 200: New Reading Spaces (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022; with Annika Bautz and Kerry Sinanan).
Synopsis: Walter Scott’s shorter fictions came in different shapes and sizes, and continue to live in different types of publications, whether the periodical, short story collection, anthology, gift book or multivolume novel. This talk focuses on just one of Scott's "wandering tales": the aptly named “Wandering Willie’s Tale”. A wandering tale is a short story that can feasibly stand apart from the novel in which it first appeared but whose textual mobility depends on, and can have an impact upon, the host novel. Scott also surrounds his wandering tales with fictional audiences who comment on the meaning of the story delivered in real time, hijacking the conventions of improvisatory oral storytelling. Wandering tales appear to be digressive but they are equally propulsive: symbolism buried or prominently displayed within the story may take on sudden significance later in the host novel. Sometimes the level of significance may be structurally integral, or it may be a throwaway remark.
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