SOURCE: "Coming Home: Waverly and Ivanhoe," in Secret Leaves: The Novels of Walter Scott, University of Chicago Press, 1985, pp. 18-48.

In the following essay, Wilt examines the symbolism of homecoming as it relates to the identity of Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, the crusader who returns to an England torn by multiple conflicts.

"Here is someone either asleep or lying dead at the foot of the cross," the irritated Normans remark as they ride, lost, through the Great Forest that dominates Ivanhoe: but it is not the last time they will be mistaken about him. The figure is neither dead nor asleep but thinking, and irritated in his turn: "it is discourteous in you to disturb my thoughts" (p. 20). Brian de Bois Guilbert and Prior Aymer de Mauleverer are foreigners and usurpers in the land; their dress and weapons and servants are Norman, Flemish, Turkish, Saracen, and the "sly voluptuary...