Disraeli, Burke and the novel

Could it be that after Burke it becomes possible to insert an individual's life into a history which is no longer to be thought of as constituted in discrete traditions (a la Alasdair Macintyre for instance) but as political in the sense that two fundamentally opposed parties have two interpretations of it? And that individuals can make a choice between enlightened modernity, on the one side, and inherited culture on the other?\

That Burke first divides history politically in this way is clear enough. But how does he conceive of the individual's relation to history? Not explicitly at all. But still: his thickening of tradition into a concept of prejudice which can stand against rationalist disordering does move in the direction I'm suggesting With it, Burke begins to treat society as a historically-given scene in which ethical choices are also political choices.

Walter Scott takes advantage of this imagining characters who choose between historical forces, and thereby grants the novel genre the weight that will make it the 19thc's priveged form. And in the 1840s, Disraeli and others (notably Charlotte Bronte) will imagine the present as a historical moment in these terms.