Reseña de Ivanhoe por Josh

This was a full-cast audio performance of Ivanhoe, so I can't completely disentangle my thoughts on Scott's novel from my impressions of the production itself.

Before downloading Ivanhoe, all I knew about Sir Walter Scott was that his novels were enormously popular in the antebellum South. Mark Twain famously argued that Scott had "created rank and caste down there, and also reverence for rank and caste, and pride and pleasure in them." In Twain's view, Scott's romanticized vision of feudal society helped fuel the conflict between Southerners who wanted to modernize and those who sought to preserve what were essentially medieval social relations.

The story is set in 1194. The eponymous Ivanhoe is a knight recently returned from the Third Crusade who has been disinherited by his father. Along the way, he receives assistance from Isaac of York, a Jewish moneylender, and Isaac's beautiful daughter Rebecca.

Their presence gives Scott ample opportunity for anti-Semitic commentary. The Christian characters deliver dozens of hostile speeches about Jews, while Isaac and Rebecca are occasionally allowed to reflect on their own persecution. Eventually, Rebecca is falsely accused of witchcraft. She demands trial by combat and persuades Ivanhoe to serve as her champion. He wins, of course, regains his inheritance, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Isaac is essentially a more pathetic and comedic version of Shylock from The Merchant of Venice: obsessed with money, miserly, cowardly, and perpetually sniveling. Rebecca, by contrast, is portrayed as almost saintly—the moral opposite of her father. She is generous, courageous, wise, and deeply pious.

In A Culture of Growth, Joel Mokyr argues that slave societies historically produced little labor-saving or economic innovation. This was not because labor was cheap (it wasn't) but because practical concerns were considered beneath the dignity of the elite. Gentlemen were expected to occupy themselves with poetry, romance, piety, and games, while the lower orders handled mundane matters such as producing food and improving production methods.

Reading Ivanhoe, I found myself thinking of Mokyr's argument as an extension of Twain's critique. The world Southerners found so appealing was one of hereditary rank, martial valor, noble lineage, and rigid social hierarchy. These values were seen as directly at odds with the values of northerners and Jews who emphasized thrift, prudence, practicality, social mobility, and useful innovation.

Overall I can't say this was a particularly good book, but it was an easy enough listen and it's free so [shrug].