When Scott was a child, he liked to listen to ancient folklore, historical stories and various religious persecution stories, and he knew well the well-known folklore in Scotland, and his interest remained undiminished throughout his life. He also likes traditional popular literature that describes ordinary people. In addition, due to his childhood illness, he has been practicing in the mountains of Scotland for a long time. All this had a decisive influence on his later writing of historical novels and stimulating his imagination. Scott's formal education began from 1775 to 1776, when he was being treated for paralysis in Bath, England. 1779, he entered a high school in Edinburgh. The study is average, but the memory is amazing, showing a strong thirst for knowledge; He has extraordinary narrative ability and often tells some touching stories to his classmates. From this time on, he was particularly obsessed with medieval knight legends and historical stories. 1783 After graduating from high school, I entered a grammar school in kelso. 1March 786, followed his father into the legal profession. 1789 Entered the University of Edinburgh to study law. At that time, he was only 22 years old and attended many lectures on law. Therefore, he has a thorough understanding of the history of Scotland from feudal society to modern society, which has played a certain role in his novel creation. Like other students, he joined many literary and philosophical associations to discuss social, historical, literary, political and philosophical issues of common concern. 1792, he finally lived up to his father's expectations and became a lawyer. However, he is not interested in this. He later said that he would join the army if he was not physically disabled. He spent a lot of time traveling around Scotland, especially on the border between Scotland and England and the Scottish Highlands. He had a broad understanding of Scotland's past, present and customs and collected a large number of folk songs. Like many young people, Scott is also very interested in pop culture and avant-garde culture. He once studied the German literary movement of "charge from the front" with friends he knew. Translated the famous German folk song Lionel. Followers of this literary school are opposed to French enlightenment literature and are more interested in their own folklore. At that time, German writers were deeply uneasy about the influence of French literature on German literature, and many young people in Scotland had similar anxiety, because their literature was also deeply influenced by foreign literature. The difference is that this influence is not from French literature, but from English literature. In addition, German writers of "Hurricane Movement Literature" believe that Scottish literature also has a certain influence on them. For Scott, what he may be interested in is not the culture and politics of Crazy Sports Literature-A Seducer, but the novelty, nationality and vanguard in this genre of works.
In the early 1990s, Scott experienced an emotional crisis. He fell in love with a girl named Wilhelmina belsky. But the girl's parents thought he was not good enough for their daughter, so they married her to someone else. Scott was extremely disappointed and sad, leaving a scar in his heart that could not be healed for many years. After many years, whenever I think of this girl, he still can't calm down for a long time. 179765438+On February 24th, he married a French woman-Charlotte Carpenter. Although this marriage is stable, there is not much affection between husband and wife. They gave birth to five children.
Apart from the Scottish Enlightenment, the most influential event for young Scott was probably the French Revolution and its influence on Great Britain and Scotland. Scott reacted strongly to1the political and social crisis in the 1990s, and resolutely opposed the jacobin Doctrine. At that time, jacobin doctrine was very popular in Scotland, and people suppressed it especially cruelly. 1797, Scott helped to form a cavalry volunteer team. Like the armies in other parts of Great Britain at that time, this volunteer army was composed of the middle class, on the one hand, to resist the French invasion, on the other hand, to deter the workers who supported France and often rebelled. Scott is very brave in this team. However, this is not his career after all. Scott's poems are full of romantic adventure stories and are very popular with readers. However, with the appearance of Byron, the master of romantic poetry, the status of other poets began to waver. Scott deeply felt that he could not surpass Byron in poetry creation, so he turned to English historical novels and provided more than 30 representative works of historical novels for English literature. But at that time, people didn't give novels enough status, thinking that novels were for vulgar people. Perhaps for this reason, Scott didn't sign his name with his real name from the beginning of writing novels to 1827. Scott did this because he was worried that writing novels would endanger his reputation as a poet. 18 14, Scott published a historical novel waverley anonymously, describing the historical events of James Party Uprising in 1745. He praised the struggle of the people in the mountainous areas of Scotland who loved freedom, and pointed out that the backward clan social system in Scotland was bound to decline under the impact of capitalism. This novel is very popular with readers, so Scott has written many historical novels under the pseudonym of "Waverley author". It was not until 1827 that he publicly admitted that he was the author of these novels.
Scott has many historical novels with Scottish history as the theme, among which the most outstanding ones are The Puritan (18 16), rob roy (18 17) and The Prison of Lothian (1865438). The Puritans describes the uprising of Scottish Puritans against persecution by the British authorities in 1679. The author praised the self-sacrifice spirit of the uprising masses and exposed the cruel repression of the ruling class, but also said that the leaders of the uprising were irrational religious fanatics. Marx once highly praised this work. Rob roy describes the Scottish Mountaineers' struggle against the British regime on the eve of the first James Uprising in 17 15. Rob roy, the Scottish Robin Hood, was an upright mountain tribal leader. Under feudal oppression, he took risks and became an outlaw who rebelled against the ruling class and killed the rich and helped the poor. Mead Lothian's prison is set in the background of 1736 Edinburgh citizens' uprising against British oppression, and describes a Scottish rural girl Jenny Dins who traveled long distances to London to meet the Queen in order to save her innocent sister who was sentenced to death. The author expressed sympathy and praise for the Scottish people.
From 18 19, Scott wrote novels based on British and European history, among which the most famous novels were Ivanhoe (18 19) and Quentin Dawood (1823). Ivanhoe vividly shows the complicated class contradictions and ethnic contradictions during the reign of Richard, the "lion-hearted king" in Britain in the12nd century, and exposes the arrogance and cruelty of Norman nobles and the suffering of Saxon working people. The author writes that Richard, the lionhearted king, is a wise monarch to ease ethnic conflicts. Quentin Davide described the struggle of French kings against feudal separatism and the establishment of centralization in the15th century. Scott thinks that Louis Xi's action of establishing a unified feudal country is of progressive significance, but it does not hide his cunning and cruelty in eliminating feudal princes. Louis Xi is one of the most vivid images in Scott's works.
18 13 was awarded the title of "Poet Laureate", but he refused. However, in 1820, when King George IV awarded him the title of "slave baron", he was honored to accept it. 1825, the partner of Scott Publishing House went bankrupt, and Scott bravely assumed all the debts of 1 14000. He stepped up writing novels, so his later historical novels looked sloppy. His health has also been damaged. 1832 died in abbotsford on September 2 1. Scott's works include 7 narrative poems, 27 historical novels, some short stories, and historical works and biographies, such as Biography of the Novelist (182 1 ~ 1824) and Biography of Napoleon (1827). Scott's greatest contribution is his historical novels, which are like huge historical scrolls, covering the social life of England and Scotland from the Middle Ages to the bourgeois revolution. The style and social customs of each era and the struggles of religions, nationalities and classes in each historical period are vividly described. He is also good at showing the role of ordinary people in historical movements and the trend of historical development. There are many unforgettable images of working people in his works. However, the characters he deliberately portrayed often become pale tools to embody Knight's ideal and compromise thought, while the images of the lower classes in his works are vivid and full. He holds a conservative view on the historical process and advocates reconciling social contradictions through compromise. While exposing the national oppression suffered by the Scottish people, it also beautifies the ancient patriarchal society in Scotland. Scott's historical novels are magnificent and magnificent, reflecting the contradictions and conflicts at major turning points in the history of England, Scotland and Europe. In his works, historical events are not boring, and they are always organically combined with the twists and turns of the story characters.
Scott's creation plays a pioneering role in European historical novels and is regarded as the founder of historical novels (for example, Russian critic belinsky regards Scott as the "father of historical novels"). Famous writers such as Dickens and Stevenson in Britain, Hugo, Balzac and Dumas in France, Pushkin in Russia, manzoni in Italy and Cooper in the United States are all deeply influenced by Scott. Among them, Cooper of the United States is known as "Scott of the United States".