Allusions/references To Actual History, Geography and Current Science
- Waverley is set during the Jacobite rising of 1745, which sought to restore the Stuart dynasty in the person of Charles Edward Stuart (or "Bonnie Prince Charlie").
- The opening paragraph of chapter viii is frequently considered one of the major attempts at describing the specifically Scottish landscape in some detail.
- Scott uses a common humorous reference to the Old Testament story that David and supporting malcontents took refuge from Saul in a cave near the town of Adullam. When the Jacobite army marches south through the North of England, they are greeted with distrust rather than the anticipated support from English Jacobites or Tories. Eventually a few diehards or desperate individuals do join them, and the Baron of Bradwardine welcomes these recruits while remarking that they closely resemble David's followers at the Cave of Adullam; "videlicet, every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, which the vulgate renders bitter of soul; and doubtless" he said "they will prove mighty men of their hands, and there is much need that they should, for I have seen many a sour look cast upon us."
- The character of "Fergus Mac-Ivor" in Waverley was drawn from the flamboyant Chieftain Alexander Ranaldson MacDonell of Glengarry. During the King's visit to Scotland, Glengarry made several dramatic unplanned intrusions on the pageantry.
Read more about this topic: Waverley (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words actual, geography, current and/or science:
“Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received when he was young within a work of fiction, embedded in it like a clean bullet in flabby flesh and quite secure there, among spurious lives.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We set up a certain aim, and put ourselves of our own will into the power of a certain current. Once having done that, we find ourselves committed to usages and customs which we had not before fully known, but from which we cannot depart without giving up the end which we have chosen. But we have no right, therefore, to claim that we are under the yoke of necessity. We might as well say that the man whom we see struggling vainly in the current of Niagara could not have helped jumping in.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“Everything in science depends on what one calls an aperçu, on becoming aware of what is at the bottom of the phenomena. Such becoming aware is infinitely fertile.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)