Title

“Fanciful Devotion”: Ritualization in Scott’s Old Mortality

Authors

George A. Drake, Central Washington UniversityFollow

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.

Comments

This article was originally published in Studies in Romanticism. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.

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