Scott's Subversion Of The Dominant Discourse And The Consequent Complicity With It In Waverley

From Scott's time on, critics have been focusing on the contradiction between the tragic sublimity and comic mockery in the representation of Scotland in Waverley. So far critics home and abroad have only been exploring the reasons in terms of the author or the growth of the hero in the text. However, both approaches are insufficient in probing the final causes for the basic contradiction. The author-oriented approach is fundamentally based on the intentional fallacy that the author has the final say as to the true meaning of his work. The formalistic approach, entirely cutting off the work's connection with the outside world, cannot settle the thematic contradiction ultimately. Carrying on this basic contradiction, this research explores its causes further by employing post-colonialism. Post-colonial studies have made extensive use of Foucault's discourse analysis. According to this theory, the meaning of a work cannot be explained in terms of the author, or the text itself, but in terms of the discourse, out of which it is produced. Knowledge, as a product of discourse, is actually an expression of ideology. In the dominant discourse, Scotland had been represented precisely as the Other: wild, irrational, poor, threatening and barbarous. As an English citizen with Scottish root, Scott recognized the distortion of Scotland in the dominant discourse. Wishing to set right the stereotype of Scotland, Scott set out to reconstruct Scottish history in his first novel Waverley. However, the author's effort to subvert the dominant discourse turns out to be complicit with it.Scott first strives to enter the dominant discourse by reducing the readers' unfavorable association with that dreadful year 1745. His playing with time in the subtitle —'Tis Sixty Years Since, relocates the time some nine years later than 1745. Successfully disarming the readers' pre-understanding, Scott then embarks on subverting the dominant discourse from within by reconstructing the repressed Scottish history: old Scottish faith, hospitality, worth, and honour. In revolt against the barbarous and fearful stereotype of Scottish people, Scott represents the Scottish characters as kind, gentle and amiable. Rather than chaotic and backward, the...