THE LOCUS OF THE CASTLE IN THE NOVELS OF WALTER SCOTT (“WAVERLY”)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the role that various castles played in the historical narrative of Walter Scott. The object of the study was mainly his first novel «Waverly». The question posed in the article is formulated as follows: why did Walter Scott, who distanced his writing from the genre of the Gothic novel and at the same time did not focus his attention on the reconstruction of the knight’s novel (both of them widely used the topos of the castle) fill his novels with the description of castles, making them the main place of action and the condition of the plot intrigues. An analysis of his novels and in particular «Waverley» shows that W. Scott introduced castles of different genealogies into his novels: historical and fictional, Scottish and English, assigning each of them its own special function. But they were united by the fact that in the romantic world of W. Scott they acted as an emblem of the fusion of history and modernity, «fiction and truth». The castle, which had already lost its main romantic and chivalrous function in the time of W. Scott, remained a mnemonic space in which history and legend, fueled by imagination, are both glorified and disavowed at the same time. The theme of castles turning into ruins and passing to other owners is another key theme of W. Scott’s historical novels. And the only counteraction to the all-consuming time is the imagination, the mechanism of which the writer starts by appealing to the castle.