From Lucy to Lucia: Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor as Adapted by Donizetti (Published)
The paper explores the treatment of major female characters in three versions of the narratives most famously known as Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor: the original incident on which the novel was based, the novel itself, and the opera, Lucia di Lammermoor, composed by Gaetano Donizetti. Because of the popularity of Donizetti’s opera, a female character, Lucia, and Lucy in the novel version, is considered a central character in both narratives. However, the novel’s plot focuses on the male protagonist, Edgar Ravenswood, and his revenge story. In a novel with remarkably few female characters, it is striking that Lady Ashton; holds arguably, the most power in the narratives, contrasting starkly with Lucy’s relative feebleness. Through an examination of the respective narratives’ different though intersecting treatments of women’s desire, power, and madness, I argue that the opera’s Lucia gains a different kind of power through Lady Ashton’s madness.
Keywords: Madness, donizetti, the bride of lammermoor, walter scott, women’s power
Sir Walter Scott as a Popular Novelist (Published)
Walter Allen says hinting to Forster’s ‘Aspects of the Novel’:
“But all that is irrelevant to Scott’s present stature as a novelist; his continued greatness rests on quite other grounds. Without being in the strict sense an historian, he revolutionized the writing of history.”Our purpose of study here is to explore these ‘other grounds’ leading to Scott’s continued popularity and analyse the various qualities present in Scott’s genius which are generally overlooked when he is branded as an historical novelist.
Keywords: historical novel, nineteenth century fiction, popular fiction, walter scott