Sir Walter Scott: A Lecture at the Sorbonne

In this lively 1919 lecture delivered at the Sorbonne, the scholar William Paton Ker uses Sir Walter Scott’s own trip to Paris and his surprise at hearing a fragment of Ivanhoe performed in a foreign tongue as a springboard for a broader meditation. He paints the scene of a writer half‑in pain, dictating his epic while imagining its distant echo on the French stage. The opening sets a tone of wonder at how a distinctly Scottish voice could travel far beyond the borders of Edinburgh and the Highlands.

Ker then contrasts the earthy humour, dialect and Covenanter spirit that colour Scott’s “Scotch novels” with the sweeping historical romances that captured readers across Europe. By quoting Stendhal, Byron, Balzac and others, he shows how the novelist was simultaneously praised for his vivid Scottishness and celebrated as a universal storyteller. The lecture argues that, despite linguistic quirks, characters such as Dandie Dinmont or Bailie Nicol Jarvie found eager audiences, proving that Scott’s imagination resonated far beyond his native landscape.