Waverley (novel)

Waverley or 'tis sixty years ago ( original title: Waverley, or, ' tis sixty years since ) is the first novel by the Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott. Waverley was published in 1814 and is regarded as the first British historical novel. In addition, the figure of the middle heroes is developed here for the first time.

Content

Edward Waverley comes from the English nobility. While his father in London, makes a political career as a partisan of the Whigs, then the supporters of the monarch from the House of Hanover, Waverley is brought up by his uncle, who taught him the old Jacobite values, ie the followers of the House of Stuart. On his father's wish, Edward begins a career as an officer in the British military. Because of a misunderstanding and false accusations he can not return from a holiday in the Scottish Highlands and closes the at that time ( 1745) in Scotland erupting second Jacobite rebellion on the side of Charles Edward Stuart ( Bonnie Prince Charlie ' ), which want to reclaim the British throne with the support especially from the Scottish Highlands of the 1714 by the Hanoverian George I reasoned British dynasty of the Stuarts.

During the final battle that wins the government side against the insurgents, Waverley is cut off from the rest of the troops, so that he can escape undetected. With the help of relations, he manages to free himself from the false accusations and to obtain pardon for his support of the Stuarts.

Waverley is in the course of the novel torn between conflicting loyalties: the obligations as a British officer and loyalty to the children to meet the Scots, the modern Britain and the fascination with the traditional culture of the Scottish Highlands, the reasonable - temperate rose and the romantic - radical flora. Waverley is often not even there, but is carried along by the events around him.

Ultimately Waverley stands up and on the side of government, progress and Rose, in the novel but is also understanding for the other side to express - probably the position of the author himself, who nevertheless supported the British state made up of a lot of sympathy for the old Scotland and the Hanoverian rulers supported. His extraordinarily popular novels that no pesky side and also the tragedy and failed, but yes, not unfounded aspirations of ultimately losing side aufzeigten, so have contributed to reconciliation still hostile population.

Expenditure

• Walter Scott: Waverley, or 'tis sixty years ago ( original title: Waverley, or, ' tis sixty years since ). German by Gisela Reichel. With an epilogue, notes, a chronology and bibliography of Kurt Gamerschlag. Complete edition. dtv, München 1982, 592 pp.