SOURCE: Valente, Joseph. “Upon the Braes: History and Hermeneutics in Waverley.” Studies in Romanticism 25, no. 2 (summer 1986): 251-76.

In the following essay, Valente probes Scott's conception of history in Waverley, emphasizing the symbolic and thematic dialectic of romance and history illustrated by opposing characters and geographical locations in the novel.

Scott's vision of history has become something of a critical chestnut: theses on it have passed through numerous restatements, and disputes have been thoroughly recycled. The same questions Lukacs and even Coleridge thought central are felt to be so today. As a result, the historiographical approaches to a text like Waverley,¹ a locus classicus of the discussion, remain relatively homogeneous. The subject has not, however, reached the point of saturation. Adjusting our perspective will, I believe, open a new and various exchange.

The historical project in Waverley has been approached previously from two directions, the first concerned with Scott's...