Fragments of the past: Walter Scott, material antiquarianism, and writing as preservation
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2017-07-04Author
Linforth, Lucy Majella
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This thesis is an exploration of the antiquarian materiality of Walter Scott’s fiction,
considering his antiquarian practices alongside his fictional output to suggest that the two are
vitally and intricately connected. It locates Scott’s antiquarian researches within the context
of a contemporary antiquarianism increasingly concerned with safeguarding the relics, ruins,
memories and manners of the national past.
The aims of this thesis are threefold. First, it illuminates a more dedicated and
dynamic participation in contemporary antiquarian practices than has previously been
attributed to Scott, exploring a broad scope of material antiquarian activities in which he was
engaged throughout his life. Second, it demonstrates how Scott’s literary output was shaped
by his participation in aspects of material antiquarianism, populating his fictions with relics
and remains, and recognising the potential of the material artefact as a productive site of
narrative. Finally and most importantly, it argues that Scott’s fictions frequently act as
textual extensions of his material practice. Scott’s poems and novels are in multifarious and
dynamic ways actively involved in the processes of collection, exhibition, preservation, and
conservation evident in Scott’s material practices. In so frequently and deliberately
incorporating the material relics unearthed by his antiquarian practices into the corpus of his
fiction, Scott’s literary works might be regarded as an additional space in which the material
past might be preserved, conserved, exhibited, and enshrined. In this way, Scott’s literary
works might therefore be considered as antiquarian repositories in which predominantly
Scottish antiquities might be preserved.