Walter Scott and the Limits of Language

本研究考察了沃尔特·司各特对话语和意义之间关系的敏锐和令人惊讶的现代理解在多大程度上是基于对语言本身的审问。虽然伊恩邓肯，彭妮菲尔丁和凯瑟琳琼斯等评论家的工作表明，斯科特的叙事模式和它们提供的意义之间的关系的关注，这本书提出，斯科特的早期兴趣之间的关系形式和意义发展成为一个基本的怀疑论语言的潜力，可靠地交流经验或作者。它考察了这些问题是如何表现和审问从早期诗歌到后期Reliquiae Trotcosienses，探索斯科特的发展对这些问题的反应反映和发展的程度18世纪的小说起源和预示着自我反思的后现代焦虑和解放的当代小说。《威弗利小说爱丁堡版》使人们对沃尔特·司各特的小说重新产生了浓厚的兴趣。它还提供了新的领域的信息有关斯科特的工作方法，以及来源背后，并告知韦弗利文本。这个版本（以及计划中的爱丁堡版斯科特诗歌）产生的批评兴趣创造了对他作品的新视角的需求。虽然最近的书籍，如卡罗琳·麦克拉肯-弗莱舍和朱利安·达西在苏格兰的背景下寻求重新解释斯科特的工作，但迄今为止还没有任何工作在现代批判理论的范式下探索EEWN的学术，以提供对斯科特创造性成果的全面研究。《沃尔特·司各特与语言的局限》就是要做到这一点，它为司各特的著作提供了一个阅读的机会，展示了以前被忽视的、但却激进的、暗示性的认识论动态和张力。在爱丁堡版工作了多年（11年担任研究员，2002年起担任总编辑）之后，我前所未有地接触到了司各特的手稿。沉浸在他的论文中使我对他的创作过程有了独特的理解，编辑该版本的卷的经验为其中的语言细微差别，微妙之处和模糊之处提供了丰富的证据。作为阿伯丁大学沃尔特·斯科特研究中心的联合主任，我也有广泛的机会向高年级本科生和研究生教授斯科特的课程。因此，我完全有资格完成一项关于斯科特的工作，这将提高学生，学者和更广泛的斯科特社区的阅读经验，以及所有对小说发展感兴趣的人

This study examines the extent to which Walter Scott's acute, and surprisingly modern, understanding of the relationship between discourse and meaning is grounded in an interrogation of language itself. While work by critics such as Ian Duncan, Penny Fielding and Catherine Jones demonstrates Scott's concern with the relationship between modes of narrative and the meanings which they offer, this book proposes that Scott's early interest in the relationship between form and meaning develops into a fundamental scepticism towards the potential of language to communicate experience reliably or authoritatively. It examines how these issues are manifested and interrogated from the early poetry to the late Reliquiae Trotcosienses, exploring the extent to which Scott's developing responses to these questions reflects and develops the eighteenth-century origins of the novel and prefigures the self-reflexive post-modern anxieties and liberations of contemporary fiction. The Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels has created a revived and vigorous interest in Walter Scott's fiction. It also offers new areas of information in relation to Scott's working methods, and the sources which lie behind and inform the Waverley texts. The critical interest generated by this edition (and a planned Edinburgh Edition of Scott's poetry) has created demand for new perspectives on his work. While recent books such as those by Caroline McCracken-Flesher and Julian D'Arcy have sought reinterpretation of Scott's work within a Scottish context, no work to date has explored the scholarship of the EEWN within a paradigm of modern critical theory to provide a comprehensive study of Scott's creative output. Walter Scott and the Limits of Language aims to do so, providing a reading of Scott's work which demonstrates previously neglected, but radical and suggestive epistemological dynamics and tensions within it. Having worked for the Edinburgh Edition for many years (eleven as Research Fellow and since 2002 as General Editor) I have had unprecedented access to Scott's manuscripts. Immersion in his papers has given me a unique understanding of his creative processes and the experience of editing volumes for the edition has provided abundant evidence of the linguistic nuances, subtleties and ambiguities within them. As co-director of the Walter Scott Research Centre at the University of Aberdeen I have also had extensive opportunities to teach courses dedicated to Scott to both senior undergraduate and postgraduate students. I am therefore well qualified to complete a work on Scott which will enhance the reading experience of students, academics and the wider Scott community, and all those with an interest in the development of the novel