The romance of commerce: Rob Roy, 1817–1818

Shields, Juliet 2023. The romance of commerce: Rob Roy, 1817–1818. Romantic Textualities (24) , pp. 25-42. 10.18573/romtext.101

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Abstract

Scott’s Waverley novels often turn on an opposition between romance—the realm of the unexpected, marvellous and heroic—and real life—the often disappointing realm of the mundane and factual. However, Rob Roy, offers readers no alternative to romance. Instead it is made up of different kinds of romance—namely the gothic and the adventure story or imperial romance. Scott maps the genre of the gothic onto Northumberland, where the remnants of feudalism still prevail, and wealth consists in landed property transmitted across generations. The adventure story, by contrast, links the Scottish Highlands with southern metropolitan Britain through a system of speculation and credit. Rob Roy reflects on Scott’s imbrication in these two systems at the time of the novel’s writing—a period of economic depression and rural depopulation—as he sold metropolitan readers another romanticized image of the Highlands in order to shore up his own landed property.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Cardiff University Press
ISSN:	1748-0116
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	13 November 2023
Date of Acceptance:	19 September 2019
Last Modified:	13 Nov 2023 18:27
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/163884

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