Story as Historiography in the Waverley Novels

Both 'stories' and 'histories' consist in narratives. Recognizing this formal and etymological identity, Hayden White has argued with respect to nineteenth-century historiography that history itself is 'made' by the choice of tropological and narrative structures derived from literature.' I wish to make with respect to Scott's fiction the same argument in the opposite direction: if formal history can be constituted by literature, so literature can constitute an historiography. How it does so is most clearly seen in the case of literary works that take history-presumed actual events and/or people-as their material: by shaping its presentation into any artistic form, they supply an historiography-not only a particular vision of historical process and change, but also a reflection of how that vision is constructed.2 The assumption is that history is not a given 'reality' or universally agreed-upon set of 'facts' that is then simply dramatized or given rhetorical clothing by the artist, but rather that the mode of dramatization or narration itself constitutes the history.3 The procedure is neither to deduce Scott's view of history from intellectual or biographical 'sources' nor to infer it from his fictional themes or materials, but rather to examine the implications of his way of telling a story.4 Thus to approach Scott's fiction -by assuming that any past, individual or collective, exists not as an absolute but only in 'versions,' and by seeking a particular version in the kind of presentation and structure that embodies it-is roughly to reverse the procedure of the more traditional methods of characterand content-analysis ably practiced by those critics who have revived serious interest in Scott during the last fifteen years.5 My purpose is not to dispute their findings but to continue their efforts by suggesting a functional concept of historical fiction in terms of which Scott may be more widely and justly appreciated. If the story both makes history and reflects the process of that making, how does it do so? It has seemed difficult to answer this question, even for those willing to ask it, without begging it-that is, without appealing to some notion of history, philosophy, or biog

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