THE STYLE OF CHANGE: HISTORICAL ATTITUDES IN THE PROSE OF SCOTT, CARLYLE, MACAULAY, AND THACKERAY

In fictional and nonfictional historical writing alike, style and narrative arrangement can indicate, as much as overt statement, the author's beliefs about how change occurs and what its value is. Working from this premise, my dissertation analyzes and compares major works by Scott, Carlyle, Macaulay, and Thackeray. Tracing the interaction of economics, heroes, and chance in eight of Scott's novels (Waverly, Old Mortality, Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, The Bride of Lammermoor, Ivanhoe, Quentin Durward, and Redgauntlet), I show how Scott adumbrates the Hegelian model of mass-hero relationships. My study of Carlyle's French Revolution demonstrates that this history is not an example of Carlyle's supposed quasi Hegelianism or hero worship; it is rather a showcase for a spectrum of historical figures with different relations with their followers. To a larger degree than Scott or Carlyle, Macaulay in his History of England emphasizes the historical importance of great men, who, through their wisdom or folly, are more responsible than the masses for the course taken by history. Thackeray's Esmond is ambivalent: he tries unconvincingly to denigrate the hero of history.;Whether the agents are great men, the masses, or a combination of these with fictional heroes, historical change results from human endeavor. Thus a historical writer's particular use of the quest archetype suggests a great deal about his historical views. Scott's Old Mortality exploits the pattern of the land redeemed by a quest, achieving a plausible but flawed blend of history and romance. Henry Esmond, on the other hand, ends in the questing hero's entrance into a paradise which suggests not the redemption of a fallen order, but an ambiguous retreat from the concerns of history. Carlyle and Macaulay use the quest pattern in their histories. In The French Revolution, Carlyle thwarts its millennialism to emphasize with deep sympathy the growing despair of the sansculottes. In the History of England, where one might expect millennialism to permeate the story of England's rise from vassal state of France to independent power, Macaulay invokes quest motifs only occasionally and superficially, mainly to embellish his retelling of military and political exploits.