Culture and Economy in Ivanhoe

TL;DR: For instance, the authors argues that a culture is a semiotic system that operates like a language, and that the cultural codes of etiquette, costume, architecture, cuisine, and economy can be traced back to Ivanhoe.

Abstract: e,}VI R Walter Scott's Ivanhoe dramatizes culture as a semiotic system that constitutes social relations. The novel's protagonists are not just Cedric, Wilfred, Bois-Guilbert, and Isaac of York, but the languages they speak: Saxon, the lingua franca, Norman, and Hebrew. The theme of language that permeates Ivanhoe is a metaphor for culture, and the novel represents many other semiotic systems, including the cultural codes of etiquette, costume, architecture, cuisine, and economy. The desire to return to cultural and economic stability, when conflicts between cultures undermine the stability of each system, motivates the conclusion of the novel, the resolution of these conflicts providing new insight into Scott's use of the past. Like the structural anthropologist, Scott posits structures that underlie cultural institutions. Drawing upon the insights of linguistics, Levi-Strauss argues that a culture is a semiotic system that operates like a language. Underlying the particular manifestations of cultural institutions-the equivalent of the particular utterances, or parole, of language-are structures that govern the production of these institutions-their grammar, or langue.' While