Comemoração de duzentos anos da publicação de Ivanhoe

To celebrate the bicentenary of the publication of Ivanhoe (1819) we will demonstrate that the romance is famous because it contributed to the upsurge of interest for History and for the Middle Ages. When we hear about the recalcitrant and savage rebels of our days' graphic novels, we see that Ivanhoe, in the 19th century, was already acting as nowadays anti-heroes and he was their model and forerunner. Thus we see that Sir Walter Scott's fame has lasted for two centuries and that his name is still known all over the world. Scott (1771-1832) was born in the Borders, he studied at the University of Edinburgh, lived in the Trossachs, as in Stirlingshire and the Loch Katrine. In 1811, he bought Abbotsford House, where he organized a collection of antiques and a library containing 20.000 volumes. Besides being a successful writer, Scott contributed to the "myth" of the Highlands and for the use of the kilt and of the different tartans, as much with his literary work as with his cultural activities. Now that his work is also accessible in the E-texts, as the Gutenberg Project and Walter Scott Digital Archive at the University of Edinburgh, we see that there is a recrudescence of interest and thus it is confirmed that he is still appreciated by a new generation of readers. Multiple studies about reception ascertain the way Scott's work was received and has influenced artistic production. Nowadays readers of Walter Scott are familiarized with the themes of Post-colonialism and, therefore, they recognize them in his narratives, and this justifies that there is still interest in reading, studying and editing his work as it deals with questions like political instability and violence, that result from mixing peoples and having fluid frontiers, that are well up-to-date topics. Thus, we see that significant literary works, like Scott's, still have interest and should be read even when their authors long ago have disappeared. The proof of the longevity of Scott's work is also evident in the fact that there are cinema productions, which are inspired in it, as the film Ivanhoe (1952), with the actor Robert Taylor, and Walt Disney's version, of 1953, with Richard Todd, thus turning the legendary Ivanhoe into a flamboyant romantic figure of popular culture and, in 1982, the Hollywood version, with Anthony Andrews and James Mason. We can thus conclude that Scott was a cult figure in European Romanticism, who well deserves the monuments that have been dedicated to him and has contributed to the awareness that the influences of poetry reach beyond the literary scope and also due to his different way of combining history with fiction.