(9ON E of the keynotes of the Waverley Novels is Scott's fascination with the problematic relationship between the imagination and reality. Novel after novel thrusts vividly imaginative characters into situations that test the validity of subjective vision-whether it is the romantic idealism of Edward Waverley and Minna Troil, the Jacobite dream of Hugh Redgauntlet and Flora Mac-Ivor, the chivalric enthusiasm of Quentin Durward, or the melancholic misanthropy of the Black Dwarf. Over and over Scott raises the same issue: is the imagination a deceiver, a builder of airy castles that crumble on contact with reality? Or is it a source of truth as well as of pleasure, a valid means of access to non-material realities? Scott has no simple or single answer, and readers have long recognized in his novels the tension between overt criticism of the delusions and excesses of the imagination and fascination with its power. The dualistic Scott who "adored" but did not "'believe in' creative imagination" has become one critical staple describing this