The location of the novel is centred upon southern Yorkshire, north-west Leicestershire and northern Nottinghamshire in England. Castles mentioned within the story include Ashby de la Zouch Castle (now a ruin in the care of English Heritage), York (though the mention of Clifford's Tower, likewise an extant English Heritage property, is anachronistic, it not having been called that until later after various rebuilds) and 'Coningsburgh', which is based upon Conisbrough Castle, in the ancient town of Conisbrough near Doncaster (the castle also being a popular English Heritage site). In the novel, Aymer is the Prior of Jorvaulx, a historical spelling of the great Jervaulx Abbey of Yorkshire. Reference is made within the story to York Minster, where the climactic wedding takes place, and to the Bishop of Sheffield, although the Diocese of Sheffield did not exist at either the time of the novel or the time Scott wrote the novel and was not founded until 1914. Such references suggest that Robin Hood lived or travelled in the region.
Conisbrough is so dedicated to the story of Ivanhoe that many of its streets, schools, and public buildings are named after characters from the book.
Sir Walter Scott took the title of his novel, the name of its hero, from the Buckinghamshire village of Ivinghoe. "The name of Ivanhoe," he says in his 1830 Introduction to the Magnum edition, "was suggested by an old rhyme.
Tring, Wing, and Ivanhoe,
For striking of a blow,
Hampden did forego,
And glad he could escape so."
Ivanhoe is an alternate name for Ivinghoe first recorded in 1665.[10]
Older rural people in the Ivinghoe area most probably pronounced the name the same as Ivanhoe, according to Prof. Paul Kerswill of the University of York, a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA).[11]
It is most probable Scott had direct knowledge of Ivinghoe and did some research before using it as the title for his novel, as he did for the other places mentioned in the novel.
The presence of Sir Walter Scott was recorded in Berkhamsted that is just 8 miles away from Ivinghoe.[12] In the novel he speaks also of "the rich fief of Ivanhoe". The Manor of Ivanhoe is listed in the largest 20% of settlements recorded in Domesday.[13]
Lasting influence on the Robin Hood legend
The modern conception of Robin Hood as a cheerful, decent, patriotic rebel owes much to Ivanhoe.
"Locksley" becomes Robin Hood's title in the Scott novel, and it has been used ever since to refer to the legendary outlaw. Scott appears to have taken the name from an anonymous manuscript – written in 1600 – that employs "Locksley" as an epithet for Robin Hood. Owing to Scott's decision to make use of the manuscript, Robin Hood from Locksley has been transformed for all time into "Robin of Locksley", alias Robin Hood. (There is, incidentally, a village called Loxley in Yorkshire.)
Scott makes the 12th-century's Saxon-Norman conflict a major theme in his novel. The original medieval stories about Robin Hood did not mention any conflict between Saxons and Normans; it was Scott who introduced this theme into the legend.[14] The characters in Ivanhoe refer to Prince John and King Richard I as "Normans"; contemporary medieval documents from this period do not refer to either of these two rulers as Normans.[14] Recent re-tellings of the story retain Scott's emphasis on the Norman-Saxon conflict.
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. The most notable Robin Hood films are the lavish Douglas Fairbanks 1922 silent film, the 1938 triple Academy Award-winning Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn as Robin (which contemporary reviewer Frank Nugent links specifically with Ivanhoe[15]), and the 1991 box-office success Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves with Kevin Costner. There is also the Mel Brooks spoof Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
In most versions of Robin Hood, both Ivanhoe and Robin, for instance, are returning Crusaders. They have quarrelled with their respective fathers, they are proud to be Saxons, they display a highly evolved sense of justice, they support the rightful king even though he is of Norman-French ancestry, they are adept with weapons, and they each fall in love with a "fair maid" (Rowena and Marian, respectively).
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.
Robin's familiar feat of splitting his competitor's arrow in an archery contest appears for the first time in Ivanhoe.
Historical accuracy
The general political events depicted in the novel are relatively accurate; the novel tells of the period just after King Richard's imprisonment in Austria following the Crusade and of his return to England after a ransom is paid. Yet the story is also heavily fictionalised. Scott himself acknowledged that he had taken liberties with history in his "Dedicatory Epistle" to Ivanhoe. Modern readers are cautioned to understand that Scott's aim was to create a compelling novel set in a historical period, not to provide a book of history.[16]
There has been criticism of Scott's portrayal of the bitter extent of the "enmity of Saxon and Norman, represented as persisting in the days of Richard" as "unsupported by the evidence of contemporary records that forms the basis of the story."[17] Historian E. A. Freeman criticised Scott's novel, stating its depiction of a Saxon–Norman conflict in late twelfth-century England was unhistorical. Freeman cited medieval writer Walter Map, who claimed that tension between the Saxons and Normans had declined by the reign of Henry I.[18] Freeman also cited the late twelfth-century book Dialogus de Scaccario by Richard FitzNeal. This book claimed that the Saxons and Normans had so merged through intermarriage and cultural assimilation that (outside the aristocracy) it was impossible to tell "one from the other."[18][19] Finally, Freeman ended his critique of Scott by saying that by the end of the twelfth century, the descendants of both Saxons and Normans in England referred to themselves as "English", not "Saxon" or "Norman".[18][19][20]
However, Scott may have intended to suggest parallels between the Norman conquest of England, about 130 years previously, and the prevailing situation in Scott's native Scotland (Scotland's union with England in 1707 – about the same length of time had elapsed before Scott's writing and the resurgence in his time of Scottish nationalism evidenced by the emergence of Robert Burns, the famous poet who deliberately chose to work in Scots vernacular though he was an educated man and spoke modern English eloquently).[21] Indeed, some experts suggest that Scott deliberately used Ivanhoe to illustrate his own combination of Scottish patriotism and pro-British Unionism.[22][23]
The novel generated a new name in English – Cedric. The original Saxon name had been Cerdic but Scott misspelled it – an example of metathesis. "It is not a name but a misspelling" said satirist H. H. Munro.
In England in 1194, it would have been unlikely for Rebecca to face the threat of being burned at the stake on charges of witchcraft. It is thought that it was shortly afterwards, from the 1250s, that the Church began to undertake the finding and punishment of witches and death did not become the usual penalty until the 15th century. Even then, the form of execution used for witches in England was hanging, burning being reserved for those also convicted of treason. On the other hand, the conductor of the trial, the Grand Master Of The Templars, is referred to as Lucas de Beaumanoir, whereas the historically real Master during that time was Gilbert Horal. There are other various minor errors, e.g. the description of the tournament at Ashby owes more to the 14th century, most of the coins mentioned by Scott are exotic, William Rufus is said to have been John Lackland's grandfather, but he was actually his great-great-uncle, and Wamba (disguised as a monk) says "I am a poor brother of the Order of St Francis", but St. Francis of Assisi only began his preaching ten years after the death of Richard I. Also, in Chapter 45, Bois-Guilbert commences the fight being mounted on his horse named Zamor, which he claimed that he had won from the "Soldan (Sultan, or Emperor) Of Trebizond". This is anachronistic, as the Comnenids founded the rump Byzantine Empire of Trebizond only in 1204, just by the end of the Fourth Crusade. Lastly, in the ultimate chapter of the novel, Rebecca, when asked by Rowena whether she would stay in England with her family or not, she says that she will accompany her father Isaac on his way to spend the rest of life under Mohammed Boabdil, King Of Grenada. In fact, the real Muhammad XII of Granada, popularly known to the Western world as Boabdil, wasn't even born before 1460, and the Emirate of Granada (most likely equivalent of the mentioned Kingdom) established before 1230.
"For a writer whose early novels were prized for their historical accuracy, Scott was remarkably loose with the facts when he wrote Ivanhoe... But it is crucial to remember that Ivanhoe, unlike the Waverley books, is entirely a romance. It is meant to please, not to instruct, and is more an act of imagination than one of research. Despite this fancifulness, however, Ivanhoe does make some prescient historical points. The novel is occasionally quite critical of King Richard, who seems to love adventure more than he loves the well-being of his subjects. This criticism did not match the typical idealised, romantic view of Richard the Lion-Hearted that was popular when Scott wrote the book, and yet it accurately echoes the way King Richard is often judged by historians today."[24]
