Roads as Regions, Networks and Flows: Waverley and the ‘Periphery’ of Romance

Abstract

Sir Walter Scott's Waverley has long been regarded as the originator of the historical novel, and much critical interest in the text centres on the way it presents 'history'. This privileging of the temporal has obscured what is perhaps an even greater achievement by Scott: the complex way in which he handles 'space'. This article examines the way roads have been described in terms of regions or networks in the novel but adds a third spatial model, fluidity, which has important consequences for how Waverley has been read, especially in terms of the 'periphery' of romance and its separation from 'history'.