ABSTRACT
The present paper aims to analyze the novel The Antiquary, by Scottish writer Walter Scott, in its relationship with the transformations in the concept of history in the period between the end of the 18th Century and the beginning of the 19th Century. These transformations concern not only historiographical practices, but also history itself as a set of experiences that, according to the theses of authors such as Reinhart Koselleck and François Hartog, fundamentally caused the fall of the Ancien Régime. Scott’s novel is about the meeting between a young British Army officer of obscure origins and an old antiquary in the coast of Scotland in the 1790s. Both of them deal with the mystery of the young officer’s origins, as well as with the impact of the political changes that occurred in the continent and how they affected the structure of British society at the period.
Keywords:
novel; modern concept of history; Walter Scott; nineteenth-century historiography; French Revolution