 |
 |
 |
|
"Little is left to us but the air we breathe...the best and bravest supply their foreign masters with soldiers, and whiten distant lands with their bones, leaving few here who have either the will or the power to protect the unfortunate Saxon." More than a century after the Norman Conquest, England remains a colony of foreign warlords. Prince John plots to seize his brother's crown, his barons terrorize the country, and the mysterious outlaw Robin Hood haunts the ancient greenwood. With the secret return of King Richard and the disinherited Saxon knight Ivanhoe, Scott unfurls his splendid and tumultuous romance, featuring the tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouch and the clash of wills between the wicked Templar Bois-Guilbert and the sublime Jewess Rebecca. In Ivanhoe Scott fashioned an imperial myth of national cultural identity and drew on the conventions of Gothic fiction, including its risky sexual and racial themes, to explore the violent origins and limits of English nationhood. This edition uses the 1830 Magnum Opus text, corrected against the Interleaved Set, and incorporates readings from Scott's manuscript.
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|