Classical allusions and narrative guidance in Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped.

This article analyzes Robert Louis Stevenson's novel *Kidnapped* as his most distinctly Scottish work, set after the 1746 Battle of Culloden and blending historical events with fiction and detailed Highland settings. It highlights the novel's classical allusions, especially Latin quotations drawn from Horace's *Ars Poetica* and Vergil's *Aeneid*, which serve to explore themes of class, education, and narrative structure, and to establish the protagonist David Balfour's status as an educated gentleman. The article also discusses the symbolic contrast between David's "silver button," representing Highland Jacobite loyalty, and his command of Latin, signifying his gentlemanly identity. Furthermore, it situates *Kidnapped* within epic literary traditions and debates about its genre, emphasizing its intertextual links to classical epics like the *Odyssey* and its adherence to Horatian narrative principles, which inform the novel's structure and its deliberately open ending that leads into the sequel *Catriona*.