Rob Roy (Modern Library Classics) - Softcover

Scott, Walter, Sir

 
9780375760600: Rob Roy (Modern Library Classics)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0375760601 ISBN 13: 9780375760600
Verlag: Random House Inc, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

1. 1. In an essay about Rob Roy , William Hazlitt wrote, Sir Walter [Scott] has found out (oh, rare discovery!) . . . that there is no romance like the romance of real life. What elements of romance pervade the novel? 2. 2. Frank Osbaldistone, the son of a wealthy businessman who joins up with the outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor on the Scottish Highlands, is both a complexly drawn character and an allegorical figure. How does the novel succeed in combining realism and allegory? Does the characterization of Rob Roy share these traits? 3. 3. Many critics praise Rob Roy for its narrative suspense. How does Scott use suspense and tension to propel his story along? Where do the climaxes occur? Do the final secrets offer a satisfying denouement to the modern reader? 4. 4. One of the novel s great themes is the interaction between two cultures and peoples, the English and the Scots. How does Scott represent the friction and fascination that occur when two cultures meet? Although the novel takes place in Britain, can you find analogies to other parts of the world? 5. 5. What role does Diana Vernon play? How does Scott s portrayal of her compare with his descriptions of Osbaldistone and Rob Roy? 6. 6. Nature plays an important part in the novel. How does Scott characterize nature? What do these characterizations evoke? 7. 7. Since its original publication in 1817, Rob Roy has garnered widely different opinions from readers and literary critics. The novel was immediately popular in Britain and throughout Europe and America, and has remained so for nearly two hundred years. At the same time, many critics lambasted it upon publication, citing its loose plotting and artless structure as its greatest flaws. This debate continues even today. Is Rob Roy a popular novel? What does that mean? Does that change how a book is read? What other books share this fate?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Georg Lukács (1885–1971), a Hungarian philosopher and writer, was a prominent Marxist literary critic. His influential works include The Soul and the Forms, The Theory of the Novel, and The History of Class Consciousness.

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Chapter I

How have I sinn’d, that this affliction

Should light so heavy on me? I have no more sons,

And this no more mine own. My grand curse

Hang o’er his head that thus transform’d thee! Travel?

I’ll send my horse to travel next.

—monsieur thomas

You have requested me, my dear friend, to bestow some of that leisure with which Providence has blessed the decline of my life in registering the hazards and difficulties which attended its commencement. The recollection of those adventures, as you are pleased to term them, has indeed left upon my mind a chequered and varied feeling of pleasure and of pain, mingled, I trust, with no slight gratitude and veneration to the Disposer of human events, who guided my early course through much risk and labour, that the case with which he has blessed my prolonged life might seem softer from remembrance and contrast. Neither is it possible for me to doubt, what you have often affirmed, that the incidents which befell me among a people singularly primitive in their government and manners have something interesting and attractive for those who love to hear an old man’s stories of a past age.

Still, however, you must remember that the tale told by one friend, and listened to by another, loses half its charms when committed to paper; and that the narratives to which you have attended with interest, as heard from the voice of him to whom they occurred, will appear less deserving of attention when perused in the seclusion of your study. But your greener age and robust constitution promise longer life than will, in all human probability, be the lot of your friend. Throw, then, these sheets into some secret drawer of your escritoir till we are separated from each other’s society by an event which may happen at any moment, and which must happen within the course of a few—a very few years. When we are parted in this world—to meet, I hope, in a better—you will, I am well aware, cherish more than it deserves the memory of your departed friend, and will find in those details which I am now to commit to paper matter for melancholy but not unpleasing reflection. Others bequeath to the confidants of their bosom portraits of their external features; I put into your hands a faithful transcript of my thoughts and feelings, of my virtues and of my failings, with the assured hope that the follies and headstrong impetuosity of my youth will meet the same kind construction and forgiveness which have so often attended the faults of my matured age.

One advantage, among the many, of addressing my Memoirs (if I may give these sheets a name so imposing) to a dear and intimate friend is, that I may spare some of the details, in this case unnecessary, with which I must needs have detained a stranger from what I have to say of greater interest. Why should I bestow all my tediousness upon you because I have you in my power, and have ink, paper, and time before me? At the same time I dare not promise that I may not abuse the opportunity so temptingly offered me to treat of myself and my own concerns, even though I speak of circumstances as well known to you as to myself. The seductive love of narrative, when we ourselves are the heroes of the events which we tell, often disregards the attention due to the time and patience of the audience, and the best and wisest have yielded to its fascination. I need only remind you of the singular instance evinced by the form of that rare and original edition of Sully’s Memoirs, which you (with the fond vanity of a book-collector) insist upon preferring to that which is reduced to the useful and ordinary form of Memoirs, but which I think curious solely as illustrating how far so great a man as the author was accessible to the foible of self- importance. If I recollect rightly, that venerable peer and great statesman had appointed no fewer than four gentlemen of his household to draw up the events of his life, under the title of Memorials of the Sage and Royal Affairs of State, Domestic, Political, and Military, transacted by Henry IV., and so forth. These grave recorders, having made their compilation, reduced the Memoirs containing all the remarkable events of their master’s life into a narrative, addressed to himself in propria persona. And thus, instead of telling his own story in the third person, like Julius Cæsar, or in the first person, like most who, in the hall or the study, undertake to be the heroes of their own tale, Sully enjoyed the refined though whimsical pleasure of having the events of his life told over to him by his secretaries, being himself the auditor, as he was also the hero, and probably the author, of the whole book. It must have been a great sight to have seen the ex-minister, as bolt upright as a starched ruff and laced cassock could make him, seated in state beneath his canopy, and listening to the recitation of his compilers, while, stand- ing bare in his presence, they informed him gravely, “Thus said the duke—so did the duke infer—such were your grace’s sentiments upon this important point—such were your secret counsels to the king on that other emergency,”—circumstances all of which must have been much better known to their hearer than to themselves, and most of which could only be derived from his own special communication.

My situation is not quite so ludicrous as that of the great Sully, and yet there would be something whimsical in Frank Osbaldistone giving Will Tresham a formal account of his birth, education, and connexions in the world. I will, therefore, wrestle with the tempting spirit of P. P., clerk of our parish, as I best may, and endeavour to tell you nothing that is familiar to you already. Some things, however, I must recall to your memory, because, though formerly well known to you, they may have been forgotten through lapse of time, and they afford the groundwork of my destiny.

You must remember my father well; for, as your own was a member of the mercantile house, you knew him from infancy. Yet you hardly saw him in his best days, before age and infirmity had quenched his ardent spirit of enterprise and speculation. He would have been a poorer man indeed, but perhaps as happy, had he devoted to the extension of science those active energies and acute powers of observation for which commercial pursuits found occupation. Yet in the fluctuations of mercantile speculation there is something captivating to the adventurer, even independent of the hope of gain. He who embarks on that fickle sea requires to possess the skill of the pilot and the fortitude of the navigator, and after all may be wrecked and lost, unless the gales of fortune breathe in his favour. This mixture of necessary attention and inevitable hazard—the frequent and awful uncertainty whether prudence shall overcome fortune, or fortune baffle the schemes of prudence—affords full occupation for the powers as well as for the feel- ings of the mind, and trade has all the fascination of gambling without its moral guilt.

Early in the 18th century, when I—Heaven help me!—was a youth of some twenty years old, I was summoned suddenly from Bourdeaux to attend my father on business of importance. I shall never forget our first interview. You recollect the brief, abrupt, and somewhat stern mode in which he was wont to communicate his pleasure to those around him. Methinks I see him even now in my mind’s eye—the firm and upright figure; the step, quick and determined; the eye, which shot so keen and so penetrating a glance; the features, on which care had already planted wrinkles; and hear his language, in which he never wasted word in vain, expressed in a voice which had sometimes an occasional harshness far from the intention of the speaker.

When I...

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Verlag
Random House Inc
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0375760601
ISBN 13 
9780375760600
Einband
Taschenbuch
Zeichner
Bogle Lockhart
Anzahl der Seiten
472
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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