Ivanhoé - Scott, Walter

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Biographie:
Walter Scott was a Scottish novelist, poet, historian, editor, and collector of tradition whose work helped shape the modern historical novel and the literary image of Scotland. Born in Edinburgh in 1771, Scott drew deeply on Scottish history, border ballads, folklore, legal culture, antiquarian scholarship, and oral tradition. His novels, including Waverley, Old Mortality, Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, and Ivanhoe, made him one of the most widely read writers of the nineteenth century and established a model for historical fiction that influenced European and American literature.Scott's interest in legend, belief, superstition, and national memory appears throughout his fiction and historical writing. In Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, first published near the end of his life, he turned directly to supernatural belief, examining apparitions, witchcraft accusations, demonology, fairies, second sight, and popular superstition with the knowledge of an antiquarian and the narrative instinct of a novelist. The result is both a study of folklore and an important document in the history of Scottish and British literary culture....