“Fanciful Devotion”: Ritualization in Scott’s Old Mortality
Document Type
Article
Department or Administrative Unit
English
Publication Date
Spring 2010
Abstract
Scott's anthropological imagination is less concerned with accurately depicting Whig and Royalist rituals than with showing how ritualization separates insiders from outsiders, high from low, and the sacred from the profane. Scott's own "invention of tradition" in staging a Highland fantasy for George IV's state visit to Edinburgh is well known and suggests even less concern for accurate recreation. But the improvised rituals and invented traditions of Old Mortality are more than fantasy: despite their lack of historicity, they express historical change.
Recommended Citation
Drake, George A. “‘Fanciful Devotion’: Ritualization in Scott’s Old Mortality.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 49, no. 1, 2010, pp. 133–51. doi:10.1353/srm.2010.0039.
Journal
Studies in Romanticism
Comments
This article was originally published in Studies in Romanticism. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.
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