Sir Walter Scott’s most popular novel is one that does not appear on many of the most common lists of “Greatest Novels.” The book does have some acknowledged flaws: though a historical novel, there are places where an alert reader might discover an anachronism or two. Further, the prose style is somewhat turgid for contemporary tastes, particularly when Scott endeavors to make the dialogue seem antiquated. And indeed sometimes Scott seems to take a long time to get to the point, though often passages that seem to the precipitant reader to slow down the process of the narration are authorial tidbits that give a kind of temporal veracity and color to the setting of the story—as, for example, the conversation between Gurth the swineherd and Wamba the jester about the state of the English language a century after the Norman conquest, which points out that the Saxons, who do the work of raising and caring for them, will use words like cow, sheep, and swine, while the Norman masters, who feast on them, will call those same animals beef, mutton and pork.
Nevertheless the influence of Ivanhoe on subsequent literature is many times greater than its current reputation among literary scholars may suggest. Scott’s great contemporary Jane Austen is far more likely to walk away with the title of “greatest British novelist of the early nineteenth century,” but Austen’s novels look backward to the tastes and concerns of eighteenth century comedies of manners while Scott’s draw on the romanticizing of the past that characterized the Romantic age in which he wrote. Thus James Fenimore Cooper, America’s most popular novelist of that same period, emulated Scott as his literary model for his famous Leatherstocking Tales, like his Last of the Mohicans. And the high medieval setting of Ivanhoe helped inspire the popular fascination of the Middle Ages for later nineteenth-century British (and American) culture, from the great and long-lasting popularity of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King to the fashion of Neo-Gothic architecture to Longfellow’s introducing the study of Dante at mid-nineteenth century Harvard. As the renowned Victorian thinker John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote, Scott “first turned men’s minds in the direction of the Middle Ages.” Besides, you just can’t beat the swashbuckling excitement of the plot, which utilizes the best elements of true medieval chivalric romances.
So it is no surprise that in November of 2019, celebrating three centuries of English novels (assuming the publication of Robinson Crusoe in 1719 to be the beginning of the tradition), the BBC News included Ivanhoe on their list of the “100 Novels that Shaped Our World.” On the “Greatest Books in the World” web site (an aggregate of 375 different “Great Books” lists), Ivanhoe appears as number 159 among the English language novels. And I am including it here as book number 76 on my own list of the “100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language.”
The novel follows the adventures of the eponymous Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, a Saxon knight returning to England in 1194 after following King Richard the Lionheart in the Third Crusade. His father, the Saxon lord Cedric, has disowned Ivanhoe because of his allegiance to the Norman Richard, and is active in supporting the highest ranking Saxon noble, Lord Athelstane, to replace Richard on the throne. Part of Cedric’s program involves marrying Athelstane to his ward, the beautiful Rowena (direct descendent of Saxon kings), although she is the beloved of Ivanhoe himself. Richard himself, meanwhile, has been captured by Leopold of Austria on his return from Palestine, and is believed to still be in captivity.
Traveling in disguise because of his father’s displeasure, Ivanhoe appears early on in the guise of a palmer (a pilgrim returning from the Holy Land), and guides a bishop and the Templar Knight Brian de Bois-Guilbert (on their way to a tournament) to his father’s manor where they are given a feast by Cedric. Also given shelter for the night are the Jewish moneylender Isaac of York and his beautiful daughter Rebecca. When Ivanhoe overhears Bois-Guilbert planning to detain Isaac and Rebecca to extort money from the Jew, he helps them to escape. In gratitude, Isaac provides the palmer with armor and a war horse with which to compete in the coming tournament at Ashby.
Disguised in his borrowed armor, Ivanhoe enters a great tournament at Ashby, presided over by Prince John, who has hopes of usurping the English crown if his brother Richard fails to return. On the first day of the tournament, Ivanhoe defeats the Templar de Bois-Guilbert at the joust. In the melee of the second day, Ivanhoe is pressed hard by several knights and is badly wounded, but is rescued by another disguised knight in black armor. Ivanhoe is declared winner of the tournament, and reveals his true identity before accepting the prize from Rowena. Another Saxon, Robin of Locksley, wins the tournament’s archery prize.
Ivanhoe is tended by Rebecca, a skilled healer, and she and Isaac decide to take the wounded knight home to York with them. They meet Cedric, Rowena, and Athelstane and their servants on the road and all agree to travel together. But they are captured by Maurice de Bracy, an ally of de Bois-Guilbert, and imprisoned in the castle of Torquilstone, belonging to Front-de-Boeuf, another ally of the Templar knight, who expects a substantial ransom for Isaac in particular. But Isaac refuses to pay anything until his daughter is released. The servants Gurth and Wamba escape and find Locksley and his band in the woods, where the anonymous black knight has taken refuge among the outlaws (for Locksley is none other than Robin Hood), and now volunteers to help with the rescue.
Meanwhile in Torquilstone, de Bracy declares his love for Lady Rowena, but she refuses him. At the same time Bois-Guilbert tries to seduce Rebecca, but she resists and spurns him. Locksley and the black knight lead a rescue in which they burn the castle. Front-de-Boeuf dies in the fire, and the black knight, revealing himself as King Richard, saves the wounded Ivanhoe from the fire. The rescue successfully frees all the prisoners except Rebecca, who is seized by Bois-Guilbert. He takes her to the nearest Templar Preceptory, where the Grand Master Lucas de Beaumanoir, to Bois-Guilbert’s chagrin, puts the Jewess on trial for witchcraft. In love with the woman and trying to save her, Bois-Guilbert secretly convinces her to ask for trial by combat, hoping to fight as her champion and save her. But to his horror, the Grand Master orders Bois-Guilbert to fight as the Templar champion.
I won’t give away the ending of the novel, whether Rebecca lives or dies, and who ends up with Rowena. All those things would be spoilers. But let’s take a look at some of the underlying themes of the novel: Scott is interested throughout in showing twelfth-century England as a place of divided peoples. Scholars have objected that the is no evidence that such was the case 130years after the conquest, but in Scott’s imagined kingdom, Norman and Saxon harbor bitter resentments, and both hold Jews in contempt. But Scott is very clear that in order to forge a stronger and better nation, they all need to learn to get along. Ivanhoe’s loyalty to Richard suggests such a union is not only possible but necessary for the health of society. As for the Jews, Scott is taking a large step here in putting behind him centuries of antisemitic portrayals in English literature. Isaac, it must be admitted, is still a kind of stereotyped moneylender but Rebecca is almost too good to be true, and one wonders why Ivanhoe is so focused on Rowena when Rebecca is pining for him. One of Scott’s more significant anachronisms, though, involves these Jews of York, since no mention is made in the text of the massacre of all the Jews in the city of York at Clifford’s Tower in 1190.
Scott may have had a contemporary point to make with this theme of unity. Ivanhoe is one of a long and very popular series of what were called the “Waverly novels”—designated thus because they were anonymous but identified as being written by “the author of Waverly” (the first of the novels). Scott did not actually publish such works under his real name until 1827. Ivanhoe, published in December 1819, was the first of these books set in England. All previous novels were set in the more recent past (the eighteenth or late seventeenth century) and in Scott’s native Scotland. It may be that Scott chose England and the more distant past to make the point that England could only be united when different factions came together. Thus the United Kingdom could only be truly united when the Scots and English put their differences aside.
The most interesting character in the novel is certainly not Wilfrid of Ivanhoe. In fact Ivanhoe is not even given the biggest part in the story. That distinction goes to the anti-hero Brian de Bois-Guilbert, who like Othello’s Iago steals most of the scenes. Scott gives him a good deal of depth, so that despite his unwavering enmity to the Saxons and Ivanhoe in particular, his love for Rebecca humanizes him. Of course, he is moved to try to take her by force at first, but as her death seems to loom closer, he finds a desperate way to try to save her. Perhaps in the end he saves himself. The ennobling effect of love is, of course, a common theme of courtly romance.
I can’t let Ivanhoe go without saying something about the character of Locksley. Scott was on friendly terms with Joseph Ritson, the antiquarian who first collected, edited, and published all extant ballads of Robin Hood in 1795, and Scott put them to use in this novel. Placing Robin during the reign of Richard I was completely Scott’s invention, though, as was his patriotic support of Richard and enmity toward Prince John. He also created the story of Richard returning to England in disguise and embracing Robin and his outlaws. These additions to the Robin Hood legend, incorporated completely in the famous 1938 Errol Flynn Adventures of Robin Hood, have been used so often now that they seem to many an ineluctable part of the outlaw’s story.
Of course, Scott’s novel has been the source of many adaptations, most famously the 1952 film starring Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine and George Sanders, nominated for three Oscars, including Best Picture. A six-part 1997 miniseries produced by the BBC in partnership with A&E is also noteworthy for the inspired casting of Ciarán Hinds as Bois-Guilbert. Several operas have been made from the novel’s material, including one by Julian Sturgis and Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame). A pastiche opera with music by Rossini premiered in 1826, and Scott was able to attend a performance himself. He later wrote his personal review in his journal: “It was an opera, and, of course, the story sadly mangled and the dialogue, in part nonsense.”