SOURCE: Sroka, Kenneth M. “Education in Walter Scott's Waverley.” Studies in Scottish Literature 15 (1980): 139-64.

In the following essay, Sroka argues that the theme of education is central to Waverley, especially as it pertains to the tension between reality and imagination in the novel.

Early in the third chapter of Waverley (titled “Education”), the narrator pauses in his discussion of Edward Waverley's formal education to speak at length about the danger of excessively

rendering instruction agreeable to youth … an age in which children are taught the driest doctrines by the insinuating method of instructive games, has little reason to dread the consequences of study being rendered too serious or severe. The history of England is now reduced to a game at cards,—the problems of mathematics to puzzles and riddles,—and the doctrines of arithmetic may, we are assured, be sufficiently acquired, by spending a few hours a-week at...