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Frolics in the Face of Europe - Sir Walter Scott, Continental Travel and the Tradition of the Grand Tour (Hardcover)
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Frolics in the Face of Europe - Sir Walter Scott, Continental Travel and the Tradition of the Grand Tour (Hardcover)
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Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) wrote frequently of his desire to
travel widely in Europe. However, he actually made only three
Continental ventures. Two were to Belgium, Northern France and
Paris. Then, shortly before his death, he at last journeyed to the
Mediterranean, the British Admiralty giving him free passage in a
warship - a notable gesture of concern for the welfare of what
today would be called a 'national treasure'. Scott visited Malta,
and many cities of Italy. His months in Naples and his weeks in
Rome provoked both interest and sadness: most of all they caused
him to reflect from afar on Scotland, the land of his birth, his
mind and his heart. He returned through the Tyrol and German lands,
regions of the Continent he had long wished to see, but which he
could by then barely appreciate. All these European trips are full
of interest for the modern reader. But equally, and almost more so,
are the many other schemes Scott entertained for wider travelling,
notably in the Iberian Peninsula and in Switzerland and Germany. In
this book, all these actual and projected journeys are examined in
the context of the Grand Tour tradition, and also in that of the
new kind of 'romantic' travel that, after 1815, came to succeed
older, prescribed forms. Frolics in the Face of Europe (the phrase
is derived from a letter of Scott's of 1824) draws on his vast
correspondence and his moving journal; on his verse, and his prose
fiction; and on the literature of travel which gave him such a wide
knowledge of the world without even leaving his study in Edinburgh
or his library at Abbotsford. A series of vignettes or
pen-portraits emerges of journeys completed, and voyages merely
dreamed of. Many social, literary and artistic connections are
made; events, places and personalities are linked, often in
surprising ways. Walter Scott emerges as a man with ambiguous ideas
about travel: one who knew that he ought to travel, and to have
travelled more than he did. But he was a writer of profound
imaginative power, whose vicarious travelling allowed him to spend
most of his time where he really wanted to be: in his native
Scotland. This book offers a fresh view of Scott as the 250th
anniversary of his birth approaches.
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