Ingrid Szu-ying Chen

Reading W. Scott's Picturesque Scotland: the Picturesque and the Representation of Scotland in Walter Scott's Waverley Ingrid Szu-ying Chen

The nostalgia and exoticism experienced by the author after the stay in Edinburgh was the origin of this critical work. Inspired by her one year's stay in Scotland, the author became interested in Sir Walter Scott and his achievement of inventing a romantic and attractive Scotland by putting local history, Gaelic folklores, and natural scenes in his novels. The book examines the picturesque aesthetics used by Scott in his first novel Waverley (1814) and reveals the paradoxical nature and politics of the time from Scott's representation of Scotland. Scott creates a representative image for the "nation" of Scotland, but this national identity continuingly waivers between romance and history as well as imagination and reality.