Speaker - Sam Baker

Often described as the inventor of the historical novel, the Scottish author Walter Scott (1771-1832) was also a poet, lawyer, pioneering editor, and popular historian. This talk will explore the theme of stewardship in Scott's fiction—with particular reference to his best remembered work, Ivanhoe, and one of his least remembered, The Fair Maid of Perth—and will connect that theme with the historiography of feudalism that Scott discovered in the writings of early modern antiquaries. Scott turns out to have been fascinated by the idea that aristocrats abandon at their peril their responsibilities as stewards for the people. What if the ultimate story of failed stewardship told by Scott is the story of a storied royal dynasty—the Stuarts themselves? Samuel Baker has been teaching in the English Department at UT Austin since 2001. He has published a book, Written on the Water: British Romanticism and the Maritime Empire of Culture (Virginia, 2010), and essays on eighteenth and nineteenth century authors including Ann Radcliffe, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, and Matthew Arnold. His current interests include media studies, gothic antiquarianism, and, of course, the poetry and fiction of Walter Scott.