Abstract
This essay considers the coexistence of nostalgia and critique of the past in the medievalist historical fictions of Walter Scott, including his verse romance Marmion, and the novels The Monastery, The Abbot, The Talisman, The Betrothed and Ivanhoe. It argues that in these texts Scott's anachronistic medievalism exhibits a ‘reflective nostalgia,’ which blends creative ‘nostalgic memory’ with ‘critical memory,’ and which stages the containment of private chivalric enthusiasm within a respect for political and military realities. Nevertheless, Scott's view of historical change as largely effected by military power also refuses to underwrite history as either providential or inherently progressive. His distinctive nostalgia asserts the lost potential of the past as a missing presence in the here and now.
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