Article: 'The Heart of Midlothian' and the masculinization of fiction.

Scott's ambivalence about the status of the novel is well known. The energy he put into an exercise of canon-formation (the Lives of the Novelists he wrote for Ballantyne) and into criticism and reviews that took the novel seriously attest to his sense that the novel had been in the past, and could continue to be, something more than ephemeral. Yet he has little to offer in defence of the novel as a genre except to suggest that novels are less morally harmful than their detractors claim, or that they are a pleasurable diversion from boredom, suffering, and even poverty.(1) Far from being a spirited defender of the novel, he seems instead defensive about it. George Levine ...

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