Talk:Ivanhoe

Discussion
I removed the part of the article that said that Ivanhoe was a suburb in Melbourne, Australia because that is unimportant information to fellow wikipedians.

I think the summary is too long, It wouldn't be so bad if there was a (very) brief overview in the introduction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.62.223.238 (talk) 15:11, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

The summary is not too long, considering that the book itself is forty-four chapters long and this summary just barely covers the plotline of the tale. 24.56.122.211 (talk) 04:23, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Date of publication/authorship
I changed "written in 1819" to "published in 1820" in the introductory sentence. The first edition scanned by Google Books (see the external links) is dated 1820, and its Dedicatory Epistle is dated November 17, 1817. I couldn't find any authoritative source stating the work was written in 1819. Does anyone have better information or citations for the date(s) of authorship and publication? Mbrubeck (talk) 01:18, 9 February 2012 (UTC) (SOMEONE WRITE IN THE ORIGIONAL PUBLISHER FROM THE BOOK COVER) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.156.91.84 (talk) 11:52, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Criticism section needed
A criticism section would be a good addition. I'd lead it off with Mark Twain, who hated Sir Walter Scott's romanticism sufficiently that in Huckleberry Finn he named the wrecked steamboat "Ivanhoe". He wrote at one point that Scott caused the US Civil War by bestowing upon the South a mistaken sense of chivalry and a determination to fight battles that are against impossible odds. This was an exaggeration of course, it's Mark Twain after all, but he's probably the leading critic (or criticizer, anyway). Tempshill 19:58, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe just a bit of the 'green-eyed monster', eh? Twain was a minnow compared to Scott, but you have to admire his conceit in daring to criticise such a giant of the literary world. Terrible thing, jealousy - usually symptomatic of an inferiority complex. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.78.240.137 (talk) 19:17, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Splitting an arrow
Did Ivanhoe split the arrow like Robin Hood?


 * No, Robin Hood split the arrow in Ivanhoe. The point is that he didn't do that in any earlier version of the legend - Scott seems to have invented it.

English language
I've seen at least two books on the English language quote Scott's shrewd observation in the book about naming food animals: the live animals have Anglo-Saxon names because the Saxon peasants raised them; the meat has Norman-French names (mutton, pork) because the Norman nobility ate it. I thought Scott should get credit in the article for this. CharlesTheBold 17:28, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

What the hell is this guy saying? He uses so many run on sentences that it is difficult to follow.24.166.7.47 20:09, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Let's take 'pig' and 'pork' for example. 'Pig' derives from Anglo-Saxon. 'Pork' derives from French. The French (Normans) conquered England. They were the rich, the overlords. They ate the meat, so it became known as pork. The serfs raising the animals were from the Anglo-Saxon population. Their word for the animal persisted into modern usage: 'pig'. Sheesh. Now, can you guess which is which, out of 'sheep' and 'mutton' ? CharlesTheBold's contribution is a very good one.Blether (talk) 01:27, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Historical Accuracy
I've altered this section to take account of authoritative but largely overlooked research. An accurate transcription of the brief but important article referred to can be found at -- Mabzilla 13:48, 11 November 2007 (UTC) Also see --Mabzilla 11:01, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Um; interesting references, but how do they support your claim that Sir Walter had it right ? As I read them the 'authoritative but largely overlooked' work is a series of glimpses of the obvious: The complaint against the Saxon-Norman split as depicted in Ivanhoe is that Scott depicts an economically unequal society in terms of an ever-intensifying race struggle, where any Marxist will tell you it should be class struggle. The serfs think that their problems come not from being serfs condemned to work for a pittance, but because the guy they work for a pittance for isn't a Saxon. They are whatever the Anglo-Saxon equivalent is of a 'Tartan Tory'. There is little/no evidence that this was how the broad toiling masses felt at the start of the 13th century, but oddly enough at the start of the 19th century Sir Walter S was a Tory and he re-popularised the tartan--Rjccumbria (talk) 01:01, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * William dished out virtually everything to the Normans who came over with him, a point which I seem to remember being taught at school 50 years ago,
 * and that they thought they were the bees' knees, which is incontestable because the chroniclers of the Battle of the Standard have someone give a speech to that effect.
 * and that Saxons without any land didn't marry into rich Norman families That could of course be due to cultural apartheid, but might it not just come down to the old tradition of the rich by and large not marrying the poor but honest, but instead homing in on the easy-going and loaded, where the 'loaded' will obviously rule out most Saxons? [But not all; Henry II was a direct descendent of Alfred the Great] Perhaps it wasn't race but class? For the Welsh of course, race did come into it ....

Like you, I had my first lessons on the Middle Ages about half a century ago, in my case from a teacher whose "bible" was Das Kapital and whose left-leaning analysis was thought-provoking and nearly as entertaining as Scott's work. However, an anachronistically Marxist Ivanhoe would indeed have been an astonishing piece of work in 1819 and unlikely to have been the success in any age that Scott's novel was and still is. My contention is that those of Scott's critics who seem to regard it as received wisdom that intermarriage between Normans and Saxons meant that, by the period in which the novel is set, there was no distinction between the two groups have their argument seriously weakened by Keats-Rohan's research. Whether one considers the way late 12th Century society operated as having resulted from a cultural or a class divide makes no difference to this point.

The first reference I give above relates directly to Keats-Rohan's work, and shows how strongly she worded her conclusions. In the second, I had intended to show how the popular historian Michael Wood directly quotes Keats-Rohan in his book In Search of England, Journeys into the English Past (1999). However, as I didn't have the book to hand, I referred to a 2008 article by Wood for the BBC's history website in which he indirectly quotes her work. Presumably this led you to think that I was claiming Wood's piece as original research rather than an article meant for the general public, and I apologise if I misled.

I'd also like to argue with your likening of Scott to the "Tartan Tories", a term applied in recent years to the Scottish National Party. Scott was a strong supporter of the Union, and the Scottish Waverley novels were intended to show Scotland as having a history and culture entitling it to a position of respect in the United Kingdom. Ivanhoe, too, ends on a note of conciliation as Cedric gives up his idea of restoring the Saxon kingdom and feels the stirrings of loyalty to King Richard.--Mabzilla (talk) 13:53, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
 * So, you've cited one (rather poor) newspaper article, and we're supposed to take your word against the established historical opinion? The least you could do is cite Keats-Rohan's actual work. Don't you have journal access of some kind? I'll be removing your little additions until such time as you can find proper citations/support.--96.26.238.33 (talk) 01:50, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * No, I didn't expect you to take my word, but that of Keats-Rohan, Wood and Keys, respected academic, popular historian and archaeological correspondent of a newspaper of note respectively. You are quite right that my references were inadequate, and I will attempt to repair this. In the meantime, perhaps you would care to make a positive contribution; take a closer look at the part of my little addition that you have left in place: "There has been criticism, as unsupported by the evidence of contemporary records, of the enmity of Saxon and Norman represented as persisting in the days of Richard I, which forms the basis of the story." I cited this as a fair representation of the established historical opinion as stated by the "Oxford Companion to English Literature", but did not point out that the only authority quoted by this book is the Victorian scholar A E Freeman, who is strongly criticised elsewhere in the book: "uncontrollable prolixity, an inability to handle MS material and a marked aversion to public libraries". and: "His boorishness inflicted long-term damage on the professorial image". I could, of course, simply revert to the statement my contribution replaced, which brusquely dismissed Scott's depiction of late 12th century England as "highly anachronistic", a demand for a citation to support this being ignored. I'd be happy if you'd provide something more generally acceptable.--Mabzilla (talk) 12:33, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Why is it that the contributions in this discussion are so erudite, and yet the 'Historical Accuracy' section itself remains so sophomoric ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Blether (talk • contribs) 16:33, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Regarding ccumbria's August 2008 analysis claiming an "ever-intensifying race struggle" depicted by Scott: does Scott make that depiction ? The Normans and the Saxons, for all their distinct cultural roots, are both ethnically white European. Is there a clear genetic divide to match the cultural and political ones ? I think it fairer to describe the conflict as a tribal or national one. Aren't both the Anglo-Saxon and the Norman peoples a mixture of Celts (who previously came out of Middle Europe and whose people and culture have since been driven to the North-Western European fringes by succeeding European waves), Romans and others from further East ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Blether (talk • contribs) 18:05, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I inadvertently made some edits from 211.3.154.154 without realising I had logged out.211.3.154.154 (talk) 22:31, 17 August 2010 (UTC) Good grief. I'll try that again -> without realising I had been logged out.Blether (talk) 22:32, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

A comment about Rebecca
I think the line about the character Rebecca needs to be altered as it is not entirely clear what it means. Shinigami27 (talk) 15:23, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Thither
I replaced the word "thither" with "there." The words thither and hither are quickly becoming obsolete (having been replaced by "there" and "here," respectively) and, therefore, their use makes the language of this article less intelligible to many readers. ask123 (talk) 16:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

A Knights Tale
Has anyone noticed a strong similarity between the movie A Knight's Tale (film) and Ivanhoe? Specifically Richard's disguise as the Black Knight as the King who fights in tournys in A Knights Tale. Or when they are choosing their competition in the tourny they strike the shields with the blade end (both book and movie). It's not complete but the allusions are surely present.

Given credit for helping to increase popular interest in the middle ages in 19th century Europe and America
Ivanhoe is sometimes given credit for helping to increase popular interest in the middle ages in 19th century Europe and America

This is not explained in the article text, nor in the Romanticism article. patsw (talk) 23:21, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

That is because, within the academic community, this statement has become accepted fact and has not typically been debated or discussed in the past forty years. I have added some quotes from Scott's contemporaries that point towards him as the source of the Medieval Revival. 24.56.122.211 (talk) 04:30, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Indeed -- Mark Twain, in "Life on the Mississippi," blames the Civil War partly on Ivanhoe. All the rich Southern planation owners had read it and and related to it and it gave them an overblown sense of entitlement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.92.112.12 (talk) 03:56, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Who?
"while Carlyle and Ruskin made similar claims"; Carlyle who? --FinnWiki (talk) 01:06, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

File:J. Cooper, Sr. - Sir Walter Scott - Le Noir Faineant in the Hermit's Cell - Ivanhoe.jpg to appear as POTD soon
Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:J. Cooper, Sr. - Sir Walter Scott - Le Noir Faineant in the Hermit's Cell - Ivanhoe.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on August 15, 2010. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2010-08-15. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page so Wikipedia doesn't look bad. :) Thanks!  howcheng  {chat} 22:31, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Effects on racial anglo-saxon nationalism in America
Shouldn't it be mentioned the large effects the novel has had on American racial Anglo-Saxonism? I mean it's the main reason that throughout the 19th century Americans of English descent, particularly in the South, referred to themselves as Anglo-Saxon rather than "of English ancestry". Isn't this worth a mention? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.94.47.16 (talk) 02:27, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Only if there are published sources to include as inline citations, then it ought to be added as a new section in the article. Prairieplant (talk) 08:50, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

middling ability??
"Ivanhoe, full name Wilfred of Ivanhoe, is the titular character of the novel Ivanhoe. He is a knight and son of Cedric the Saxon. Ivanhoe, though of a more noble lineage than some of the other characters, represents a middling individual in the medieval class system who is not particularly exceptional in his abilities, as is expected of other quasi historical fictional characters, such as the Greek heros. Critic Georg Lukacs points to middling main characters like Ivanhoe in Sir Walter Scott's other novels as one of the primary reason's Scott's historical novels depart from previous historical works and better explore social and cultural history"
 * Did Lukacs read the book? Ivanhoe won the tournament.-Rich Peterson24.7.28.186 (talk) 10:42, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not about his physical ability, it's about his position in the rigidly hierarchical class system of the era. Dhartung | Talk 03:22, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Regards Ivanhoe's ability he beat five knights in a tow at the Tournament, which was exceptional. It is noted above that his 'middling ability' refers to his social station rather than his actual ability, in which case why not say middle class instead of middling abilities? Philip Jelley (talk) 20:26, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The concept of a "middle class" did not exist in medieval times, you were either noble or common. Ivanhoe was a noble; the term "middling" refers to his status among the nobility, neither high status, nor lower status nobility. Mediatech492 (talk) 20:37, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

To Kill a Mockingbird
Should the article have a 'cultural references' section? In To Kill a Mockingbird Jem reads Ivanhoe to Mrs Duboe. It might be good idea to include the way in which Ivanhoe is mentioned in other texts. (Galaxycat (talk) 21:14, 7 June 2012 (UTC))


 * Although this might be a good idea, I've seen this type of catch-all, "Ivanhoe as seen in..." sections on other pages grow into huge nightmares where anonymous editors dump in all kinds of garbage. Not against the idea - it'll just need policing. Ckruschke (talk) 13:13, 8 June 2012 (UTC)Ckruschke

The Name "Ivanhoe"
"Ivanhoe" in English is similar to "Ekkehard" in German, both names are literally "Ironheart" in modern English. Having an "iron heart" means "to be brave", in German, and possibly, in English as well. Purportedly, those names have been very common in the Middle Ages. 79.227.183.115 (talk) 03:08, 25 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Eh? In what English dialect did the word for 'iron' have a ‹v›? —Tamfang (talk) 08:37, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Scott took the name from a place mentioned in an old rhyme. "Tring, Wing, and Ivinghoe, Hampden of Hampden did forgo, for striking the Black Prince a blow."  Zacwill  ( talk ) 20:10, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

, If that source of the name Ivanhoe is correct, and there is a source to cite that, could you add it to the article? Prairieplant (talk) 08:48, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

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"Lasting Influence on the Robin Hood Legend" has serious issues
Hi, y'all!! I'm confused by the placement of the Robin Hood legend as a subsection under "real history and geography" ... Anyhow, I have been working on Robin & Ivanhoe subsections for the Yeoman and Gest article re-writes. (See (Yeoman, Yeoman, A Gest of Robyn Hode.) With all the RH & Ivanhoe scholarship out there, I'm rather surprised that so much of the content is lacking citations. In fact, the scholarly reference is to Siobhan Brownlie's book on the Norman Conquest & Nugent's 1939 movie review for the NY Times. I was expecting to see something along the lines of "here is what the RH legend was before Scott" => "here are Scott's changes" => "here is what the RH legend was after Scott". Instead, the reader is presented with (unsourced) vague statements such as: "...Scott appears to have taken the name from an anonymous manuscript ...". The editor(s) also makes important statements which should be explored further, but are just left hanging: Furthermore, each point in the following paragraph is inaccurate:
 * "Scott makes the 12th-century's Saxon-Norman conflict a major theme in his novel."
 * "Scott also shunned the late 16th-century depiction of Robin as a dispossessed nobleman (the Earl of Huntingdon)."
 * "This, however, has not prevented Scott from making an important contribution to the noble-hero strand of the legend, too, because some subsequent motion picture treatments of Robin Hood's adventures give Robin traits that are characteristic of Ivanhoe as well." (I'm still confused about the link between between those 2 statements...)
 * This particular time-frame was popularised by Scott. He borrowed it from the writings of the 16th-century chronicler John Mair or a 17th-century ballad presumably to make the plot of his novel more gripping. Medieval balladeers had generally placed Robin about two centuries later in the reign of Edward I, II or III.

Oh, btw, Locksley's "splitting the arrow" was inspired by the "splitting the wand" in the Gest. Both RH & LJ do it repeatedly. It's moving the targets farther away - and making the shot - that made RH the champion at the Sheriff's archery contest. OK ... OK ... since I'm already so far in, I might as well do the whole subsection revision. (I'm almost done with my Ivanhoe updates, so the subject is still fresh in my mind.) And I'm going to move the legend out of the "real history" (we have enough of that with the History Channel...) Ta-Ta for now!! --AnalyticalHistoricalHobbyist (talk) 18:16, 11 February 2022 (UTC)