Waverley (novel) - Allusions/references To Actual History, Geography and Current Science

Allusions/references To Actual History, Geography and Current Science

  • Waverley is set during the Jacobite rising of 1745, which sought to restore the Stuart dynasty in the person of Charles Edward Stuart (or "Bonnie Prince Charlie").
  • The opening paragraph of chapter viii is frequently considered one of the major attempts at describing the specifically Scottish landscape in some detail.
  • Scott uses a common humorous reference to the Old Testament story that David and supporting malcontents took refuge from Saul in a cave near the town of Adullam. When the Jacobite army marches south through the North of England, they are greeted with distrust rather than the anticipated support from English Jacobites or Tories. Eventually a few diehards or desperate individuals do join them, and the Baron of Bradwardine welcomes these recruits while remarking that they closely resemble David's followers at the Cave of Adullam; "videlicet, every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, which the vulgate renders bitter of soul; and doubtless" he said "they will prove mighty men of their hands, and there is much need that they should, for I have seen many a sour look cast upon us."
  • The character of "Fergus Mac-Ivor" in Waverley was drawn from the flamboyant Chieftain Alexander Ranaldson MacDonell of Glengarry. During the King's visit to Scotland, Glengarry made several dramatic unplanned intrusions on the pageantry.

Read more about this topic:  Waverley (novel)

Famous quotes containing the words actual, geography, current and/or science:

    What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational. On this conviction the plain man like the philosopher takes his stand, and from it philosophy starts in its study of the universe of mind as well as the universe of nature.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that positions be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one’s contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.
    Angela Davis (b. 1944)

    Whilst Marx turned the Hegelian dialectic outwards, making it an instrument with which he could interpret the facts of history and so arrive at an objective science which insists on the translation of theory into action, Kierkegaard, on the other hand, turned the same instruments inwards, for the examination of his own soul or psychology, arriving at a subjective philosophy which involved him in the deepest pessimism and despair of action.
    Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968)