Abstract: In his first Scottish historical novel Waverley, the Scottish writer Walter Scott explores the cultural trauma of Scotland in the historical background of the 1745 Jacobite event, attempting to interrogate the collective memory of the Scottish and the English in the 19th century. Emphasizing on the remembrance of the spiritual heritage of Scotland other than violence, Scot reconstructs the cultural memory of Scotland. He reconciles the past with the present by treating the traumatic memory with the “pardon de bienveillance.” Nevertheless, he cautions the Scottish against the idea of “oubli facile” for its damage to the integrity of ethnic memory. Scott’s memory writing in Waverley provides an example of how to deal with traumatic ethnic memory.

Key words: Walter Scott, Waverley, trauma, memory, forgetting, forgiveness