Abstract
This article argues for the continued usefulness of the notion that there is a 'problem' with historical fiction, a point I first suggested twenty years ago in The Forms of Historical Fiction. In the first part of the article, I discuss what I meant by suggesting that such a problem existed, and I make explicit some Of the political stakes involved. My main purpose in The Forms, however, was to reveal the variety of functions history has been called upon to perform in historical fiction. In particular, my argument was that in nineteenth-century historical fiction, history had played three roles, serving sometimes as a source of imaginative energy, sometimes as a pastoral realm, and sometimes as a work's actual subject. A perceptive early reader of my project pointed out that underlying these three functions was a simpler dichotomy. some novels interested themselves in representing history, while others did not. This dichotomy reflected my belief that realistfiction could indeed address the past in a substantial and significant way, though not all such fiction did so. In the second part of the article, I turn to Redgauntlet to explore a problem with Scott's fiction, his alleged lack of seriousness as a novelist. My aim here is to show that the assumptions about novel form that find Scott lacking in seriousness are likely to be less alive to the realities of life in history than he is. Beyond that, I attempt to reveal in Redgauntlet a musical play with the elements of history that may embody his most profound response to our fate as historical beings.