Cupid’s decorous lanthorn at 200
12th October 2017
Summary of the Talk:
Anthony Mandal's talk explores the differing relationships of Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott with history, probability, and the boundaries of fiction. It highlights their contrasting approaches to narrative and character development, touching upon both public and private realms, as well as gender dynamics within their works.
- Historical Engagement: Mandal opens by examining the historical engagement in the works of Austen and Scott. Austen's novels are grounded in contemporary, domestic settings, focusing on the lives of the gentry and their manners, while Scott's historical novels engage with the broader past, often through grand national events like the Jacobite uprisings. Though Austen avoids history's complexity, her characters often deal with its influence in subtle, private ways.
- Scott’s Masculine vs Austen’s Feminine Approach: Scott's novels are masculine and public, shaped by historical narratives, while Austen’s are feminine and private, concerned with interpersonal relationships and the minutiae of daily life. Mandal points out that Scott’s historical narratives embrace the external world, whereas Austen's works often emphasize internal, private worlds that focus on smaller, more intimate social interactions.
- Scott’s Review of Austen’s Work: Scott's review of Austen’s Emma reveals a fundamental tension in their views on fiction. Scott admires Austen’s ability to capture ordinary life but critiques her lack of "grand" incidents and historical context. Austen, in her letters, also acknowledges Scott’s success, though with some reluctance, and expresses discomfort with the melodramatic tendencies of historical fiction.
- Probability and the Limits of Fiction: Austen's works often adhere to "probability," focusing on realistic plots where character choices and social constraints define the narrative. Conversely, Scott’s works sometimes stretch the bounds of probability, invoking grand historical backdrops that invite readers to engage with history more directly.
- Public and Private Worlds: Mandal explores how Scott's and Austen’s novels frame the public and private spheres. Scott's works often involve characters trying to fit into the broader historical narrative, while Austen’s novels highlight the private sphere, where women in particular must navigate societal expectations, marriage, and personal identity.
- Futurity and Legitimacy: Mandal compares the heroes of Scott's novels, who typically recover their inheritance and role in society, with Austen's protagonists, who often navigate and subvert the systems of inheritance. In Austen’s works, social and moral values are more fluid, and characters are often rewarded for rejecting the burdens of their inherited social status.
Interesting Points:
- Austen’s Domestic Realism: Austen's attention to the "little bit of ivory" – her focus on small, realistic social worlds – was contrasted with Scott’s grand historical sweeps. This juxtaposition highlights the value Austen places on realism and personal transformation within ordinary settings.
- Gender Dynamics: Mandal’s exploration of the feminine versus masculine worlds in the novels of Austen and Scott is insightful, showing how Scott’s historical romances were often seen as an escape from societal constraints, whereas Austen’s novels subtly critique the same social structures.
- Scott’s Influence on Historical Fiction: The talk underscores how Scott reshaped the historical novel genre by blending fiction with history, creating a hybrid that set the stage for future historical fiction but diverging significantly from Austen's more focused and inward narratives.
This detailed comparative analysis sheds light on the different ways these authors shaped the English novel, examining their diverse approaches to history, probability, and the blending of fiction with realism.
Download the [transcript]
Download the [transcript]
Introduction by our Chairman, Prof. Peter Garside.
Welcome to this year’s annual Joint Scott Lecture; and once again on behalf of the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club I’d like to acknowledge the input received from firstly our co-sponsors the English Department at the University of Edinburgh and secondly our hosts the Faculty of Advocates for their generosity in providing (among other things) a room and refreshments. All in all it’s hard to think of a more appropriate location for this event, in surrounds which one might say offer a mini-history of Scott’s professional life. On the way here you’ll have passed along the splendid high-arched Parliament Hall, home of the original Scottish Parliament, prior to its being handed over the lawyers after the Union of 1707, and where the senior advocates perambulated in small groups, to avoid being overheard, aped by junior members such as the young Scott eager to give the impression that they too had business. Positioned near the entrance you came through into the library is the statue of a sedentary Scott, by John Greenshields, with ‘Sic Sedebat’ at the foot, ‘Thus [or In this way] he sat’: according to some the most lifelike of the many representations of Scott. One year I recollect the Faculty placing in this room the seat in which Scott did actually sit as a Clerk to the Court of Session: a particularly comfy and somewhat worn-looking green leather armchair, not dissimilar to ones presently here, where some of you are now hopefully also comfortably sitting.
Finally it is a great pleasure to introduce Professor Anthony Mandal as today’s speaker. Anthony and I once worked together in the English Department at Cardiff University, where twenty years ago we were both involved in the foundation of the Centre of Editorial and Intertextual Research (CEIR), which is still thriving, now under his own Directorship. His thesis on Jane Austen was published as a book titled Jane Austen and the Popular Novel: the Determined Author (a double-entendre there with ‘Determined’) in 2007: this being one of the first studies to view Austen’s novels in the context of the 1810s, when they were published, rather than in the 1790s when some of them were first conceived. As such it invited more direct comparison with Scott, whose earlier output of fiction ran in tandem with Austen’s own. Since then Anthony has become a General Editor of the New Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, and has also published in 2014 an edition of Mary Brunton’s Self-Control (1811): arguably the first novel published from Scotland to gain recognition on a national British level, and hence a forerunner of Scott’s success. His present work includes a co-authored Palgrave History of Gothic Publishing, and he is also currently on sabbatical leave to write a book on narrative and immersive play.
Comparison between Scott and Austen as novelists is not only relevant today but also timely, in view of the recent bicentenary of Austen’s death, which among other things has led to her image appearing on an English banknote, matching Scott’s much longer tenure on Scottish ones. Anthony’s aim today is to use the bicentennial commemorations of Austen’s death to explore the relationship between genre and gender in both writers’ works, starting with Scott’s famous review of Emma, while also addressing some of both authors’ changing fortunes over the last two centuries as background.
