关键词: 瓦尔特?司各特; 《威弗利》; 社会变革; 苏格兰高地文化

Abstract: The late 18th-century and early 19th-century witnessed the dramatic and unprecedented changes of Scotland in its politics, economy and society. Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since (1814) is the first historical novel of Sir Walter Scott (1771—1832), a Scottish poet and novelist, which tells the adventures of Waverley, its fictitious hero, in Scotland during the 1745—1746 Jacobite rising or rebellion. By adopting comparative and historical methods, at the same time, based on the symbolic meaning of Scottish Highland culture as well as the historical background of the novel, this paper examines how Scott writes about the high-speed social changes in modern Britain in the form of romance. The conclusion of this paper is that although Waverley is set in the 18th-century Scotland, the novel focuses on the origin of British revolution and violence from late 18th-century to early 19th-century as well as the fate of modern Britain. Meanwhile, Scott points out the dramatic social changes in Scotland and the rapid disappearance of Highland ancient culture within 60 years, from the failure of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion to 1805, its narrating present, which indicate the conflicts between high-speed commercialization and the transmission of traditional culture in modern Britain. The social problems revealed and discussed by Scott in Waverley is historically and geographically specific, but they are still significant for China’s social development in the context of globalization.

Keywords: Walter Scott; Waverley; social changes; Scottish Highland culture