Ivanhoe

It is very interesting that Ken is reading a book in the historical fiction genre. Interesting because Sir Walter Scott, the author of Ivanhoe, is credited with creating the genre. Super quick summary it's the story of Ivanhoe whose father disiherited him. The story is set in the time of King Richard's return from the crusades, and as such all of the characters of that time make their appearance. Robin Hood and his associates Friar Tuck, Little John is away on business. The relationship of this classic novel and I has been one of love and hate over the past few weeks. Hate because it is so unnessesarily wordy. Pages on the people's dress! Love because of the overall story and romance of the whole era, as well as the beauty of the characters. Another hate and probably most hateful of all is how Scott self narrates. He will say things like, "At this point in our narrative we must pause" or "If this situation were to occur in our age" Then with 20 pages left in the book Scott went off on a very, very, odd tangent. Our main heroin Rebecca has been tried as a witch and is awaiting a champion as her only possible salvation. It is at this point Scott takes us on a trivial account of an insignificant character Athelstane's supposed death and strange ressurection, he was just in a coma. Then when we get back to the same physical location where Rebecca is being held we get two pages of peasants recounting and arguing about the events of Athelstane's story, which we just experienced in first person. The only thing I can pull besides frustration from this interjection is that it could possibly be a allusion to Ivanhoe's own resurection as his father's son. But we get pages and pages of all this and the climax is done in one page. However, Scott hit his absolute high mark at the trial of Rebecca! Perfect amount of description and beautiful description at that of Rebecca's beauty and courage in the midst of ememies. I don't remember if I cried but if I did I wouldn't feel bad. Overall I enjoyed the whole thing very much, but I didn't exactly know why. It took me a little while to get used to the language but then I just fell in love with the whole story, despite its many flaws. A personal side note, since I was a kid we used to always watch Disney's live action Robin Hood movie from the 50's and that movie basically rips off all their details and settings from Ivanhoe. Which is considered responsible for creating and cementing our current idea of Robin Hood.