When "Ivanhoe" was required reading

One of my current reads happens to be Ivanhoe. This isn't especially weird for me. I read a lot of old stuff and a lot of British stuff. In the past couple of years I've read other Scott novels and enjoyed them. I'm comfortable with both a nineteenth-century prose style and a medieval setting. Archaic vocabulary does not trip me up, and I don't mind protracted descriptions, windy commentary, or so-called author intrusion.

And yet--I'm recalling with wonder and puzzlement: this was once required reading in public schools across the U.S. I got through it somehow, along with the rest of my ninth-grade class, but I missed all the adventure in a sea of confusing language, lost context, and bewildering names. And I was an ace English student--top of my class, straight A's, 800 on the SAT, Advanced Placement, later an English major, later still a publications professional paid for my language skills.

If I wasn't up to it, who was?

What were they thinking? I can handle it now, but how many 14-year-olds could have been expected to get much of anything out of this? All else aside, how much of the history of medieval England was any American highschooler expected to know? I'm amazed that there weren't dozens of more recent, more generally readable, and more culturally apt choices that were considered to be essential to the education of American young people.

Here's one take on this question:
"Why did our elders judge Ivanhoe to be suitable for 10th graders? The plot plods, the characters are unidimensional cliches, and there's a total want of suspense. The dialogue is ludicrous."
What We Read in the Fifties: Ivanhoe

Here's another:
"His epic novels used to be required reading for generations of schoolchildren. But the works of the early 19th century author Sir Walter Scott have recently fallen out of favour, considered too ponderous and wordy for the tastes of modern readers."
Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe Controversially Rewritten to Make It Easier to Read

What's yours?

Give Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, a listing in your reading agenda. Today's generation, the
'
youth have a short span of reading attention. Classics literature is actually a "lighthouse" to good

reading. I hated literature in schools, reading to pass examinations. Grasping very hard and

taking the wrong ways of understanding this subject, English Literature.As I grow older into the

retirement years of my life,I come to love Literature very much, and searching for more titles to

read. This is an evolution of my reading tastes, pulp fiction and best-sellers were things of the

past. I will go for titles by the winning writers - Nobel Prize Literature, Booker Prize, other book

awards.

Commentary:

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9050321/Dont-chop-Ivanhoe-just-skip-the-boring-bits.html

Summary of Ivanhoe:

www.sparknotes.com/lit/ivanhoe/summary.html

I read it in high school, and loved it! I loathe the concept of dumbing down books to "make them easier to read". One of my English teachers did that with Moby Dick*. "Skip the whaling chapters." Seriously. Years later, when I re-read the entire book, I realized that skipping those vital parts of it were what ruined the initial experience.

*{rant}Oh, for cryin' out loud! Could someone please do something about touchstones, so the proper book comes up somewhere on the list? {/rant }

I remember reading Ivanhoe in the 9th grade. Also Lady of the Lake My friends & I would go around with fake medieval English accents.

We also read Shakespeare in the original play form. Romeo and Juliet, which was easy, the next year "Hamlet" our senior year it was "Macbeth" A movie came out that year which starred Sir Alec Guiness. Our whole class (plus chaperones) rode the streetcar downtown to the "arts" cinema to watch it.

A few years after that, starting in 1950, the whole curriculum for High School English was "Modernized" By that time I had graduated. If it were not compelled, I don't believe I or few of my friends would have read any of those classics. Movies were later made of most of them (some with a changed title) . That might have been an easier introduction to the classics.

In the 1970s I was teaching at a girls' boarding school in Gloucestershire (UK) and the works of Walter Scott were a favourite of the headmistress. And I remember reading Ivanhoe and some of his other historical novels as a teenager and enjoying them. But I wouldn't enjoy them now. As a teenager I lived not for from Pendle Forest in Lancashire UK and a book I really enjoyed was "Pendle Witches" by William Harrison Ainsworth who in some ways was England's answer to Walter Scott. He wrote a good number of historical novels. I don't think they would go down well with modern readers (or modern me). I can't explain it but whereas I would agree with lilithcat (#3) about not dumbing down Shakespeare or perhaps Chaucer or John Donne I'm not sure either Scott or Harrison are worth the struggle. Their style is old-fashioned and irritating.

I'm currently reading The Heart of Midlothian by Scott as part of a long term, just-for-the-helluvit project of reading all of Scott. I love the style, but then I so despise most modern (within the last thirty years or so) writing that I just don't read fiction from this period. By squeezing out all of the problems with 19th cent. writing they've squeezed the life out of their prose. I like long wordy sentences that paint more complete images. After having read six or seven of Scott's earlier novels I'm pretty used to the vernacular language so that doesn't bother me much or slow me down. I feel like I've learned a good deal about the Scottish/English wars of the seventeenth - eighteenth centuries and a good bit about religious intolerance, the subject of most of his early novels. I see the rise of American Chritianism in the fundamentalist religious beliefs of the Scots.
I've read lots of Henry James and Edith Wharton this past year, along with a Twain that left me convinced in my assessment that he was just one rung above a hack.
Anyway, over the past year I've read a lot of Scott and really like it.

Way back in the 1960s, when I was in 10th grade and living in a small mountain town in western Pennsylvania, we were assigned the following books to read and discuss: The Grapes of Wrath, A Farewell to Arms, As I Lay Dying, and In Cold Blood. I hated them all -- remember, this was 10th grade -- and the Capote book scared the hell out of me. Today, I love all those books, except In Cold Blood, which I haven't been able to pick up since. I've yet to try Sir Walter Scott, but I am intrigued by his books and his reputation, and I wish I had sampled him in high school. My wife & I plan to visit Scotland sometime within the next 3 years, and I wonder which of Scott's books would I benefit from the most.

Any suggestions?

>7 Maleva: Well, you can actually visit the Heart of Midlothian near St. Giles on the Royal Mile (High Street) in Edinburgh.



I wish I'd read the novel before going there.

I've read only a few of Scott's novels so far, and I think any of them would have added to my experience of visiting Scotland. I'd want to put Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped on the list too.

Excellent suggestions. Back in the early 70s, when I was in the USN, I had visited Edinburgh and walked the Royal Mile, but I missed the neat image you show in your photograph.

I will select a few of Scott's novels, and Stevenson, for my TBR pile, which is in danger of toppling.

>9 Maleva: Not my photo, I'm afraid, but one I picked out of Google Images because it gives some idea of scale and context instead of just being a heart-shaped mosaic. The photo I took has my feet in it.

If your TBR pile isn't in danger of toppling, you're not doing it right.

Be sure to read some Burns, too, while you're at it.

I recall reading Ivanhoe as a callow youth, but probably not as a set book at school. It must have made an impression on me as in later life I have reread it many times and thoroughly enjoyed it. Possibly English schoolchildren of that era would identify with it more than in the USA, as we would have been more familiar with some of the history, myths, places and characters. Whether modern youth are still as familiar is a different question.

Like >6 geneg:, I find myself enjoying a lot of older novels these days, up to about the 1950s, with a lot from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Different style, different pace, different vocabulary, different sense of humour, etc than the more recent ones. Those written around the 1950s awaken nostalgia, as they remind me of an era which I can just about remember but which soon changed.

I share the dislike for dumbing down expressed by some posters, and I think >2 razzamajazz: is probably right in saying that attention spans are getting much shorter. But I fear it'll be a real uphill struggle to try to reverse or even slow down that process.

To this day, the only author I was forced to read in high school English class that I will touch is Shakespeare. Every other book I had to read was such torture that I can't face them. A lot of this was probably the enforced slow pace. Even then I was reading several books a week. More was the dissection of everything. I read Ivanhoe two years ago and enjoyed it.

One thing I really like are the Shakespeare editions my kids brought home from school. Large - great big - paperbacks with the text on the top inner quadrants surrounded by definitions, bits of history, pictures... If you are going to have kids read these books, something like this is a big help.

I've been on a long term walk through Sir Walter Scott. Got bogged down after reading the first ten novels or so in chronological sequence beginning with Waverley, his first novel up to The Abbott. His Waverley novels are historic novels regarding the Border Wars of the Seventeenth and early Eighteenth centuries. One of the most interesting aspects of these works is the role religious differences played in these wars, often a greater part than issues of sovereignty, especially among the lower classes. These represented Albion's contribution to the religious wars that drove so many out of Europe to America. One can learn two things from these stories: religion, misused, as it almost always is, is poison and can weaken countries and destroy societies, and that the refugees from Europe brought their religious intolerances to this country where, from time to time they raise their ugly heads, now being one of those times. If people had some idea of the destruction religious intolerance brings maybe we wouldn't be so quick to engage in its wars. The first half dozen or so of his novels examine all sides of these four way conflicts between the Kirk, the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and a particularly virulent, nasty brand of murderous fundamentalism practiced by the most ignorant of the lot, just like today, but with violence, the Covenenters. I find this aspect of Scott the most interesting. The stories themselves I would call typical romantic adventure, except that Scott was inventing the genre as he wrote them. As it turns out, the novel I'm currently hung up on is something of a ghost story. Spirits figure prominently in the story. At some point I will pick up The Abbott again and plunge forward.

Ivanhoe picks up the theme of religious intolerance through its depiction of the life of Isaac of York and the view of his daughter as beautiful but forbidden fruit. There is, too, the backdrop of Richard Cour de Leon fighting the mighty Saladin during the Crusades.

If romantic adventure is not your thing, Scott may be a slog, but if, in the spirit of character driven novels you enjoy the deep dive into historical stories of the Borderlands, a trip into the character of the Borderlands and the people they bred, you can't beat them.

I recommend the Scott novice begin with Waverley and move forward from there.

This is much more guidance than I ever expected, and it is very appreciated. I am a novice, where Scott is concerned. I've downloaded some of his novels onto my Kindle last night, but I will be visiting my local B&N on Tuesday, and I'll see what I can find there. I always prefer the actual physical book in my hand, as opposed to the electronic one. Now I just have to rearrange my order of title priorities, which seems to shift every few hours.

I need more space for a bigger bedside table. Maybe I should just eliminate the bed.

>14 Maleva: My bedside table is full. The triple-stacked TBR shelf is also full. At this point, I don't know if I'm going to live that long.

Now that I think about it, I remember reading as an eight-grade assignment Treasure Island and Pyle's Men of Iron. We read each book as a class, chapter-by-chapter, and then discussed the material. I wish I could remember in greater detail. Since then, I've always had warm feelings for Stevenson's classic tale.

Well, I'll keep this brief - unlike Scott, who never could.
I also read Ivanhoe as a teenager. I don't think it was on assignment, which may have helped. I enjoyed the feudal clash between Saxon and Norman, and somehow - then - I had the patience for its length.
More recently, as a mature (i.e. old) adult, I've tried picking up both The Heart of Midlothian and The Talisman. The sheer weight of verbiage in both was intolerable. The plot creeps along because Scott had to describe every article of clothing, every aspect of the landscape or urban scape, the weather, page after page, before the next bit of action finally comes along. I think there is a good argument to be made that a carefully abridged edition of a Scott novel would be a much better experience.
By the way, this doesn't mean that I am a fan of post-modern minimalism. I usually follow the advice of a wise old journalist in our town who suggested, 'Whenever you are tempted to pick up a new book, pick up an old one!'

What I do heartily recommend is that if you travel to Scotland, visit Scott's home at Abbottsford. One of its many pleasures is browsing the titles in Scott's personal library. Several people here have commented on the important role that religious conflicts play in the Waverley novels. I spotted on his bookshelves a tome called something like "Popish Plots." A friend suggested Scott took that book literally, whereas I see it as illustrating his interest in understanding all perspectives on the religious conflicts involved in the novels.
Scott the man rather than writing stylist was in some ways quite modern. At Abbottsford, he ran pipes underground from the steam boiler that heated the house (a modern element in itself for the time) to pipes within the brick walls that enclose the garden. That way, he got more heat for plantings near the walls than that northern clime could otherwise provide.

I've still not read Ivanhoe and at this time I can't say that I have any plans to do so. My high school reads were All Quiet on the Western Front, The Scarlet Letter and Macbeth as well as other short stories or books I've totally forgotten! I hated All Quiet but loved the Scarlet Letter....have read 2-3 times in the past 30 years. About time for another re-read!

I do see the very vast difference in writing between the good and the mundane. I draw the line at about 1920. I especially like the 16th and 17th century writers, mostly British and Russian.