Professional paper
Writing Historical Fiction: Outlander within the Romantic Tradition of Waverley
Karla Zorčec
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Sir Walter Scott is considered a pioneer in historical fiction; he had set up a framework for a wide range of writers that would later deal with the problem of history. The first among his notable historical novels is Waverley, taken as a paradigm of the genre, in which one can trace the extent of Scott’s influence. The paper juxtaposes Waverley with the first two novels of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, in which Gabaldon depicts the same topic, the Jacobite risings in 1740s Scotland, using similar literary vehicles. The dichotomy between the historical and the romantic, and the representation of history as a problem rather than a set of truths are presented as arguably the most important common aspects of their work. Consideration is given to their protagonists, the natural environment, and the moment in time. It is argued that in the depiction of eighteenth-century Scotland Gabaldon follows Scott’s example, giving new life to the romanticized land and everyday
life of the Highland clans. It is then suggested that, in their rendering of the irretrievable past, the two authors’ position as historical writers equals that of a historian, since both the historiographic and the fictionalized texts have the possibility to be romanticized. Based on postmodernist perspectives, it is suggested that history and historiography can be viewed as types of fiction. It is argued that the writers focus on the feeling of history rather than historical facts, which are inherently irrevocable.
Keywords
Waverley; Outlander; Scotland; history; romantic; fiction
Hrčak ID:
244492
URI
Publication date:
4.4.2020.
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