Editing Ivanhoe (section)

==Allusions to real history and geography==
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.

{{quote|
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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://epns.nottingham.ac.uk/browse/id/53282ee4b47fc407e3000382|access-date=9 September 2021|title=Ivinghoe | website=Survey of English Place-Names | publisher=English Place-name Society |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326025121/http://epns.nottingham.ac.uk/browse/id/53282ee4b47fc407e3000382 |archive-date= Mar 26, 2023 }}
</ref>

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).<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.ivanhoemanor.com/ |access-date=9 September 2021|title=The Manor of IVANHOE, alias Ivinghoe | website=Invinghoe - Buckinghamshire }}</ref>

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 eight miles away from Ivinghoe.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://blhms.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/beorcham_1952-07.pdf |access-date=10 September 2021| title=Some Notable Berkhamsted Women | author=Beorcham | website=Berkhamsted Local History & Museum Society }}</ref>
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]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://opendomesday.org/place/SP9415/ivinghoe/ |access-date=9 September 2021|title=Ivinghoe | website=Open Domesday | author=Anna Powell-Smith}}</ref>

===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, South Yorkshire|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.<ref name="sb">Siobhan Brownlie, ''Memory and Myths of the Norman Conquest''. Woodbridge, Suffolk; Boydell & Brewer Ltd., 2013. {{ISBN|1843838524}} (pp. 124-5)</ref> 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.<ref name="sb"/> 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]] [[Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood|1922 silent film]], the 1938 triple Academy Award-winning ''[[The Adventures of Robin Hood|Adventures of Robin Hood]]'' with [[Errol Flynn]] as Robin (which contemporary reviewer [[Frank Nugent]] links specifically with ''Ivanhoe''<ref>{{cite news |last=Nugent |first=Frank S. |author-link=Frank Nugent |date=13 May 1939 |title=The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) |url=http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=EE05E7DF173FB72CA0494CC5B67994886896 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120715171815/http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=EE05E7DF173FB72CA0494CC5B67994886896 |archive-date=15 July 2012 |newspaper=The New York Times |department=Reviews}}</ref>), 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 Major (philosopher)|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]], [[Edward II of England|II]] or [[Edward III of England|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 fairly 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.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MieMDgAAQBAJ&q=Ivanhoe.+not+history&pg=PA123|title=Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern England|last=Alexander|first=Michael|date=2017-04-04|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-22955-4|language=en}}</ref>

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."<ref>"Ivanhoe", page 499. ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'', 1989</ref> Historian [[Edward Augustus Freeman|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 of England|Henry I]].<ref name="eaf">Edward Augustus Freeman, ''History of the Norman conquest of England: Volume Five, The effects of the Norman Conquest''. Oxford, Clarendon Press,  1876. (pp. 825-6).</ref> 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 [[Interethnic marriage|intermarriage]] and [[cultural assimilation]] that (outside the aristocracy) it was impossible to tell "one from the other."<ref name="eaf"/><ref name="aw">{{cite book |last=Williams |first=Ann |author-link=Ann Williams (historian) |title=The English and the Norman Conquest |location=Woodbridge, Suffolk |publisher=Boydell & Brewer |year=1997 |isbn=978-0851157085 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/englishnormancon0000will/page/1 1-3] |url=https://archive.org/details/englishnormancon0000will/page/1 }}</ref> 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".<ref name="eaf"/><ref name="aw"/><ref>{{cite book |last=Kumar |first=Krishan |author-link=Krishan Kumar (sociologist) |title=The Making of English National Identity |url=https://archive.org/details/makingenglishnat00kuma |url-access=limited |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=2003 |isbn=978-0521777360 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/makingenglishnat00kuma/page/n61 48]-49 }}</ref>

However, Scott may have intended to suggest parallels between the [[Norman Conquest]], which takes place roughly 130 years before the setting of ''Ivanhoe'', and Scott's native Scotland, which had [[Acts of Union 1707|united with England in 1707]] roughly the same length of time ago, and witnessed a resurgence in [[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.<ref>{{cite news |last=Linklater |first=Andro |url=http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/3275251/freedom-and-houghmagandie.thtml |title=Freedom and Haughmagandie |department=Book Review |newspaper=The Spectator |date=24 January 2009 |access-date=18 August 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101203125513/http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/3275251/freedom-and-houghmagandie.thtml |archive-date=3 December 2010 |url-status=dead |df=dmy-all }}</ref> Some experts suggest that Scott deliberately used ''Ivanhoe'' to illustrate his own combination of Scottish patriotism and [[Unionism in Scotland|unionism]].<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/16/walter-scott-edinburgh-book-festival |title=Scotland's image-maker Sir Walter Scott 'invented English legends' |last=Higgins |first=Charlotte |newspaper=The Guardian |date=16 August 2010 |access-date=18 August 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Kelly |first=Stuart |title=Scott-land: The Man who Invented a Nation |year=2010 |publisher=Polygon |isbn=978-1846971792 }}</ref>

The novel generated a new name in English—[[Cedric]]. The original Saxon name had been ''[[Cerdic]]'' but Scott misspelled it—an example of [[Metathesis (linguistics)|metathesis]]. "It is not a name but a misspelling" said satirist [[H. H. Munro]].{{Citation needed|date=February 2025}}

In England in 1194, it would have been anachronistic for Rebecca, a Jewish woman, to be charged with [[witchcraft]]. In medieval witch trials, it was usually the belief in witchcraft that was prosecuted as a heresy, a charge a non-Christian woman would not have been subject to. Death did not become the usual penalty until the 15th century and even then, the form of execution used for witches in England was hanging, not [[burned at the stake|burning]]. 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 II of England|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 43, Bois-Guilbert commences the fight being mounted on his horse named Zamor, which he claimed that he had won from the "Soldan 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 novel's ultimate chapter, Rebecca and her father move to Granada to spend the rest of their lives under Mohammed Boabdil. In fact, the real [[Muhammad XII of Granada]], popularly known to the Western world as Boabdil, was not even born before 1460, and the [[Emirate of Granada]] established before 1230.

Despite this fancifulness, ''Ivanhoe'' does make some prescient historical points. The novel is occasionally critical of King Richard, "who seems to love adventure more than he loves the well-being of his subjects"—in contrast to the idealised, romantic view of Richard popular at the time, but rather echoes the way King Richard is often judged by historians today.<ref>{{cite web |publisher=SparkNotes |url=http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/ivanhoe/section11.rhtml |title=Analytical overview: Ivanhoe |access-date=18 August 2010 }}</ref>