Analysis of Sir Walter Scott’s The Talisman

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 19, 2025

Sir Walter Scott introduces The Talisman, second in his group of books comprising his Tales of the Crusade, explaining how he selected the topic for his novel. The Talisman, as indicated by the title, focuses on a charm or amulet called the Lee-penny that Scotsman Sir Simon Lockhart, famous for exploits with Robert the Bruce, procured during the Crusade led by James, the Good Lord Douglas.

While ransoming a prisoner to his mother, Sir Simon noticed her care to scoop up a coin with a pebble in the middle, “some say of the Lower Empire,” which fell from her purse. He demands the amulet as part of her son’s ransom, and she explains its peculiar powers, including healing powers derived from its having been dipped in holy water. Each leader of the Lockharts of the Lee bequeathed the talisman to the next generation, and the hero in possession of the amulet in the novel is Kenneth, the Knight of the Couching Leopard.

He travels in service to King Richard the Lionhearted (Richard I) in an attempt to reclaim the Holy Land, and his adventures made the book extremely popular. The accusations of treason against Kenneth, his near death at the hands of Richard, and his salvation through the efforts of the Saracen Saladin, are enhanced by the jousts Scott’s medieval-setting novels always contain.

Scott explains that the Richard he sketches in the novel will differ from he who appeared in his earlier work. He bases his characterization on the reports that the monarch, respected for observing the code of chivalry in his homeland, “showed all the cruelty and violence of an Eastern sultan” during the invasion, while the sultan in the novel, Saladin, “on the other hand displayed the deep policy and prudence of a European sovereign.”

Although not the case in later times, in Scott’s own day, The Talisman proved even more popular than what later readers know as the author’s classic, Ivanhoe (1819). Scott struggled in deciding upon which aspect of the Orient to focus, explaining in his introduction that most of his knowledge of the area came from his reading of Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. He admitted he lacked insights into the present-day Orient of the author of Anastasius (1819, Thomas Hope) and Hajji Baba (Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan, 1824, James Morier), leading him to focus on medieval times, with history as his guide.

Removal of Scott’s trademark local color present in his earlier series to focus on the exotic setting of the medieval Crusades advanced Scott’s popularity on the Continent. There, readers found thrilling the circumstances that pitted Christian against Muslim.

Like Scott’s other works, this novel provided an excellent example of a quest, with elements borrowed from the Gothic and Romance, such as dreams/visions; mysterious figures including hermits and dwarfs; the foreboding setting of Syria, compared to “brimstone and salt”; and the constant threat of bodily harm. It also advanced the development of historical fiction.

In addition, The Talisman exhibits the author’s trademark vision of great events in terms of the human beings they involved, handled with compassion and insight into human nature, although many of his characters lack true complexity. Scott emphasizes the burden of choice shared by all humans, and how such choice converts some men into heroes and others into scoundrels. More important than battlefield heroism was the achievement involved in survival of day-to-day conflict and its pressures.

Clear in The Talisman is that after 1820, Scott emphasized romance elements over realistic detail. While some critics took offense at his loose play with fact, Scott clearly stated he was writing romance, not history, a fact that New Historicism critics appreciate.

Bibliography

Allen, Walter Ernst. Six Great Novelists: Defoe, Fielding, Scott, Dickens, Stevenson, Conrad. Folcroft, Pa.: Folcroft Library Editions, 1971.

Rigney, Ann. Imperfect Histories: The Elusive Past and the Legacy of Romantic Historicism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001.