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Loading... The Monastery (1820)by Sir Walter Scott
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Great fun - I normally find ghosts and ghoulies rather irritating in novels (and silly anywhere else...), but there's something endearingly batty about a ghost who can only talk in ballad-verses and makes it her business to promote the Protestant faith. It would be churlish indeed to complain about her. This is another book where Scott wisely lets the "minor" characters do all the hard work, and leaves the ostensible hero and heroine very much on the sidelines. Halbert gets to fight a duel and escape from the evil baron's castle hanging from his belt, but that's about it; the lovely Mary Avenel has to be content with about three lines in the whole book. The characters who steal the show are the foppish courtier Sir Piercie Shafton and the intrepid Mysie of the Mill. Sir Piercie can't stop himself talking like an Elizabethan play, to the growing frustration of all those around him; Mysie is a splendid woman of action out of the same stable as Jeanie Deans (but unaccountably in love with Piercie). Abbot Boniface and his sub-prior Father Eustace are also one of the great boss/sidekick teams of literature. At some points their interaction seems to be straight out of Dilbert: at others it's reminiscent of Burns and Smithers... Scott is very obviously enjoying himself on his Tweedsdale home territory - we get some nice little literary, geographical and historical digressions, as well as a lot of fascinating detail about the perquisites of millers under Scottish law. It struck me as I was reading this that The Monastery is an even more operatic story than The Bride of Lammermoor, but no-one seems to have made a successful opera out of it. (I did find a reference to something called La Donna bianca di Avenello by Pavesi, but as far as I could see it's a completely different story.) Maybe the Italian censors weren't ready for stories that show protestants getting the better of Cistercians. A missed opportunity: it would have been great if Bellini or someone had done it, with Dame Joan as the Donna Bianca, Dame Janet as Maƫsi della Molina, and Sir Geraint as Sir Piercie. I suppose we'd have had to have Domingo and Carreras as Halberto and Eduardo, too... no reviews | add a review
Belongs to SeriesWaverley Novels (1550) Waverley Novels, publication (1820) Belongs to Publisher SeriesEveryman's Library (136) Sammlung Hofenberg (Scott) Is contained inContains
Find out what Scott really wrote going back to the original manuscripts, a team of scholars has uncovered what Scott originally wrote and intended his public to read before errors, misreadings and expurgations crept in during production.The Edinburgh Edition offers you:* A clean, correctedtext* Textual histories* Explanatory notes* Verbal changes from the first-edition text* Full glossariesTitle DescriptionSet on the eve of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, The Monastery is full of supernatural events, theological conflict and humour.Located in the lawless Scottish Borders, the novel depicts the monastery of Kennaquhair (a thinly disguised Melrose Abbey, whose ruins are still to be seen near Scott's own home at Abbotsford) on the verge of dissolution, and the fortunes of two brothers as they respond to a new social and religiousorder. Highlights of the narrative include a moving encounter between two representatives of opposing sides in the Reformation controversy who had been who had been students together in less troubled times, and the final formal procession of the Kennaquhair monks as the Reformed forces arrive. Atalking-point when the work was first published, the mysterious spectral White Lady, guardian of the magical Black Book, still intrigues readers.A strong comic element is provided by Sir Piercie Shafton with his absurd linguistic mannerisms fashionable at the English court. The narrative is preceded by one of Scott's most charming and playful introductory exchanges between the fictional local antiquary Cuthbert Clutterbuck and the Author ofWaverley. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.7Literature English English fiction Early 19th century 1800-37LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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After Scott's preface, I wasn't expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised, and enjoyed it as much as the other books in the series. The supernatural is now maybe not so jarring, and the annoying prat is now a familiar plot device.
The historical background, as usual in the Waverley novelsl, was a bonus. This book is set in Scotland in the era after the English reformation, but before the equivalent Scottish changes. ( )