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. Ivanhoe is an alternate name for Ivinghoe first recorded in 1665. 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). 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. 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.
Lasting influence on the Robin Hood legend '', an 1839 painting by
Daniel Maclise inspired by the novel 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. 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.), 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 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. 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." 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. 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." 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". 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
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. Some experts suggest that Scott deliberately used
Ivanhoe to illustrate his own combination of Scottish patriotism and
unionism. The novel generated a new name in English—
Cedric. The original Saxon name had been
Cerdic but Scott misspelled it—an example of
metathesis. 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
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 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 XI 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. ==Reception==