Jacqueline Howard
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198119920
- eISBN:
- 9780191671258
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198119920.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, Criticism/Theory
This is the first full-length study of Gothic to be written from the perspective of Bakhtinian theory. The author uses Bakhtin's concepts of heteroglossia and dialogism in specific historical ...
More
This is the first full-length study of Gothic to be written from the perspective of Bakhtinian theory. The author uses Bakhtin's concepts of heteroglossia and dialogism in specific historical analyses of key works of the genre. Her discussions of Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho, Matthew Lewis's The Monk, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein demonstrate that the discursive ambiguity of these novels is not inherently subversive, but that the political force of particular discourses is contingent upon their interaction with other discourses in the reading process. This position enables the author to intervene in feminist discussions of Gothic, which have claimed it as a specifically female genre. The author suggests a way in which feminists can appropriate Bakhtin to make politically effective readings, while acknowledging that these readings do not exhaust the novels' possibilities of meaning and reception. Drawing on the most up-to-date debates in literary theory, this is a sophisticated and scholarly analysis of a genre that has consistently challenged literary criticism.Less
This is the first full-length study of Gothic to be written from the perspective of Bakhtinian theory. The author uses Bakhtin's concepts of heteroglossia and dialogism in specific historical analyses of key works of the genre. Her discussions of Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho, Matthew Lewis's The Monk, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein demonstrate that the discursive ambiguity of these novels is not inherently subversive, but that the political force of particular discourses is contingent upon their interaction with other discourses in the reading process. This position enables the author to intervene in feminist discussions of Gothic, which have claimed it as a specifically female genre. The author suggests a way in which feminists can appropriate Bakhtin to make politically effective readings, while acknowledging that these readings do not exhaust the novels' possibilities of meaning and reception. Drawing on the most up-to-date debates in literary theory, this is a sophisticated and scholarly analysis of a genre that has consistently challenged literary criticism.
Melissa Sodeman
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780804791328
- eISBN:
- 9780804792790
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804791328.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
Ann Radcliffe’s fiction taps into the historical consciousness opened up by Sophia Lee to depict, in a different way, the problems of historical recovery. Radcliffe’s scenes of reading emphasize what ...
More
Ann Radcliffe’s fiction taps into the historical consciousness opened up by Sophia Lee to depict, in a different way, the problems of historical recovery. Radcliffe’s scenes of reading emphasize what is left out of written records, cuing her readers to see how just as the technology of writing cannot fully archive the complexity of lived experience, neither can the past be revived by sympathetic reading. In an era intensely aware of the historicity of writing, of the ways in which language was subject to decay and only some texts were retrieved from dereliction and neglect, Radcliffe anticipates the fading of her novelistic effects and her disappearance from a canon reserved largely for male poets. Her novels allow us to better read the situation of popular women novelists, for despite her unsurpassed success, even Radcliffe found herself outside the protections given to more canonical authors.Less
Ann Radcliffe’s fiction taps into the historical consciousness opened up by Sophia Lee to depict, in a different way, the problems of historical recovery. Radcliffe’s scenes of reading emphasize what is left out of written records, cuing her readers to see how just as the technology of writing cannot fully archive the complexity of lived experience, neither can the past be revived by sympathetic reading. In an era intensely aware of the historicity of writing, of the ways in which language was subject to decay and only some texts were retrieved from dereliction and neglect, Radcliffe anticipates the fading of her novelistic effects and her disappearance from a canon reserved largely for male poets. Her novels allow us to better read the situation of popular women novelists, for despite her unsurpassed success, even Radcliffe found herself outside the protections given to more canonical authors.
Elizabeth R. Napier
- Published in print:
- 1987
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198128601
- eISBN:
- 9780191671678
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198128601.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter discusses The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe. It argues that the Gothic—because it extends rather than resolves the tensions between reason and imagination, and fortitude and ...
More
This chapter discusses The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe. It argues that the Gothic—because it extends rather than resolves the tensions between reason and imagination, and fortitude and sensibility—not only fails to settle the central questions of The Mysteries of Udolpho; it contributes directly to the production of an aesthetic of loss and deprivation, in which melancholy and suffering become the highest expression of feeling, and in which the abandonment of the self to the weakness of superstition is seen, paradoxically, as a form of emotional heightening and liberation.Less
This chapter discusses The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe. It argues that the Gothic—because it extends rather than resolves the tensions between reason and imagination, and fortitude and sensibility—not only fails to settle the central questions of The Mysteries of Udolpho; it contributes directly to the production of an aesthetic of loss and deprivation, in which melancholy and suffering become the highest expression of feeling, and in which the abandonment of the self to the weakness of superstition is seen, paradoxically, as a form of emotional heightening and liberation.
Jonathan Dent
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719095979
- eISBN:
- 9781526115195
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719095979.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Re-evaluating the implications of the French Revolution for Gothic fiction, this chapter examines representations of the past in a novel that is often neglected in Gothic studies: Radcliffe’s The ...
More
Re-evaluating the implications of the French Revolution for Gothic fiction, this chapter examines representations of the past in a novel that is often neglected in Gothic studies: Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest. Written in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution, but set in seventeenth-century Roman Catholic France, it discusses the ways in which the novel bears traces of the present and examines the significance of the decaying abbey and fragmented manuscript that feature in the novel. Citing the enormity of the events taking place in France and the challenge they presented to established Enlightenment historical theories and methods, it is argued that The Romance of the Forest responds to such shifting notions of history by revealing a heightened sense of historical consciousness that is engendered by the French Revolution. Influenced by The Recess and utilising the Female Gothic’s focus on the heroine, this chapter shows how Radcliffe’s novel engages with the politics of the past and, more specifically, with the contested ‘Gothic’ views of history presented in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790).Less
Re-evaluating the implications of the French Revolution for Gothic fiction, this chapter examines representations of the past in a novel that is often neglected in Gothic studies: Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest. Written in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution, but set in seventeenth-century Roman Catholic France, it discusses the ways in which the novel bears traces of the present and examines the significance of the decaying abbey and fragmented manuscript that feature in the novel. Citing the enormity of the events taking place in France and the challenge they presented to established Enlightenment historical theories and methods, it is argued that The Romance of the Forest responds to such shifting notions of history by revealing a heightened sense of historical consciousness that is engendered by the French Revolution. Influenced by The Recess and utilising the Female Gothic’s focus on the heroine, this chapter shows how Radcliffe’s novel engages with the politics of the past and, more specifically, with the contested ‘Gothic’ views of history presented in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790).
Peter Otto
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199567676
- eISBN:
- 9780191725364
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199567676.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter takes Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) as a representative example of the ‘waking dreams’ constructed by gothic fictions. In so doing, it reconceptualizes some of the key ...
More
This chapter takes Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) as a representative example of the ‘waking dreams’ constructed by gothic fictions. In so doing, it reconceptualizes some of the key features of gothic fiction: its unprecedented mixing of conventions designed to represent the actual world with those normally deployed to evoke the marvellous; its ability to evoke in readers a powerful sense of the reality of its unreal worlds; and the consequent power of these virtual-realities to rouse the emotions of those who enter them. The argument begins with an account of John Locke's use of the camera obscura and magic lantern to illustrate the distinction between sensation and imagination, reason and passion, the real and the virtual; and it draws on the sensational psychology of David Hume, in which the mind itself is ‘a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance’.Less
This chapter takes Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) as a representative example of the ‘waking dreams’ constructed by gothic fictions. In so doing, it reconceptualizes some of the key features of gothic fiction: its unprecedented mixing of conventions designed to represent the actual world with those normally deployed to evoke the marvellous; its ability to evoke in readers a powerful sense of the reality of its unreal worlds; and the consequent power of these virtual-realities to rouse the emotions of those who enter them. The argument begins with an account of John Locke's use of the camera obscura and magic lantern to illustrate the distinction between sensation and imagination, reason and passion, the real and the virtual; and it draws on the sensational psychology of David Hume, in which the mind itself is ‘a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance’.
Elizabeth R. Napier
- Published in print:
- 1987
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198128601
- eISBN:
- 9780191671678
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198128601.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter discusses The Italian by Ann Radcliffe. It shows how the difficult juggling of the moral and the dramatic in Gothic works is particularly evident in Gothic novelists' attitudes towards ...
More
This chapter discusses The Italian by Ann Radcliffe. It shows how the difficult juggling of the moral and the dramatic in Gothic works is particularly evident in Gothic novelists' attitudes towards their villains, who propel their plots and energize the ethical systems that test the hero's or heroine's endurance.Less
This chapter discusses The Italian by Ann Radcliffe. It shows how the difficult juggling of the moral and the dramatic in Gothic works is particularly evident in Gothic novelists' attitudes towards their villains, who propel their plots and energize the ethical systems that test the hero's or heroine's endurance.
Mighall Robert
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199262182
- eISBN:
- 9780191698835
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199262182.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter examines the properties that define Gothic fiction and demonstrates the importance of various geographical and institutional locations for this genre in England during the late 18th ...
More
This chapter examines the properties that define Gothic fiction and demonstrates the importance of various geographical and institutional locations for this genre in England during the late 18th century and mid-Victorian period. It highlights the importance of anachronism in Gothic fiction and describes the historical and rhetorical attitudes which underpin this mode. It analyses early Gothic fiction including Ann Radcliffe's A Sicilian Romance and The Italian.Less
This chapter examines the properties that define Gothic fiction and demonstrates the importance of various geographical and institutional locations for this genre in England during the late 18th century and mid-Victorian period. It highlights the importance of anachronism in Gothic fiction and describes the historical and rhetorical attitudes which underpin this mode. It analyses early Gothic fiction including Ann Radcliffe's A Sicilian Romance and The Italian.
Jayne Elizabeth Lewis
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226476698
- eISBN:
- 9780226476711
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226476711.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
It is conclusive that Ann Radcliffe’s writing is a despondent version of Joseph Priestley’s contemporary experiments on, and in, the “different kinds of air. ” Priestley’s relationship with and ...
More
It is conclusive that Ann Radcliffe’s writing is a despondent version of Joseph Priestley’s contemporary experiments on, and in, the “different kinds of air. ” Priestley’s relationship with and romance of atmosphere could be said to be somewhere between the romantic organicism of the future and the corpuscular and mechanistic paradigms of the past. Fixed air, or carbon dioxide—the gas that made Priestley’s name—would be the perfect example of this romance, resulting in Priestley seeing what other kinds of “factitious air” might make up “common air.” As it so happened, fixed air appears in Radcliffe’s writing as well, in the popular travelogue of her 1794 tour. This chapter looks at how science and literature seemingly converge into new grounds, and how this encouraged experimentation in gothic fiction.Less
It is conclusive that Ann Radcliffe’s writing is a despondent version of Joseph Priestley’s contemporary experiments on, and in, the “different kinds of air. ” Priestley’s relationship with and romance of atmosphere could be said to be somewhere between the romantic organicism of the future and the corpuscular and mechanistic paradigms of the past. Fixed air, or carbon dioxide—the gas that made Priestley’s name—would be the perfect example of this romance, resulting in Priestley seeing what other kinds of “factitious air” might make up “common air.” As it so happened, fixed air appears in Radcliffe’s writing as well, in the popular travelogue of her 1794 tour. This chapter looks at how science and literature seemingly converge into new grounds, and how this encouraged experimentation in gothic fiction.
Alison Milbank
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- November 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198824466
- eISBN:
- 9780191863257
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198824466.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature
Radcliffe’s Anglican orthodoxy is established in Chapter 4, along with her attempt through her fiction to offer a theology of mediation and participation. She works with Shaftesbury’s Platonic moral ...
More
Radcliffe’s Anglican orthodoxy is established in Chapter 4, along with her attempt through her fiction to offer a theology of mediation and participation. She works with Shaftesbury’s Platonic moral realism in contrast to Mrs Barbauld’s associationist view of taste and develops a mode of mystical ascent through the interplay of vertical and horizontal experiences. The sublime allows ascent through an awareness of one’s created nature, which is linked to Shaftesbury’s taxonomy of forms. It is an inherently social and virtuous experience, as in James Thomson’s Seasons, and centred on melancholy—an awareness of fallenness, which again allows for a mediation through this distantiation. Twilight’s veiling inbetweenness restores a sense of the lost Eden, while music and liturgy offer humanity’s articulate praise as an example of a Shaftesburian ‘form that forms’. Radcliffe’s explained supernatural is revisioned as a false idolatrous sublime that mistakes an effect for a cause and refuses the mystical ascent.Less
Radcliffe’s Anglican orthodoxy is established in Chapter 4, along with her attempt through her fiction to offer a theology of mediation and participation. She works with Shaftesbury’s Platonic moral realism in contrast to Mrs Barbauld’s associationist view of taste and develops a mode of mystical ascent through the interplay of vertical and horizontal experiences. The sublime allows ascent through an awareness of one’s created nature, which is linked to Shaftesbury’s taxonomy of forms. It is an inherently social and virtuous experience, as in James Thomson’s Seasons, and centred on melancholy—an awareness of fallenness, which again allows for a mediation through this distantiation. Twilight’s veiling inbetweenness restores a sense of the lost Eden, while music and liturgy offer humanity’s articulate praise as an example of a Shaftesburian ‘form that forms’. Radcliffe’s explained supernatural is revisioned as a false idolatrous sublime that mistakes an effect for a cause and refuses the mystical ascent.
Jayne Elizabeth Lewis
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226476698
- eISBN:
- 9780226476711
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226476711.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
Ann Radcliffe’s popular romances of the 1790s marked the widespread literary practice of gothic fiction—the key signature of which is atmosphere. Atmosphere in the gothic sense, however, can pertain ...
More
Ann Radcliffe’s popular romances of the 1790s marked the widespread literary practice of gothic fiction—the key signature of which is atmosphere. Atmosphere in the gothic sense, however, can pertain to two things. Frist is Deidre Lynch’s illuminating view that the shroud which surrounds the gothic page signals a separation with the Enlightenment’s presumptions of transparency. Second is the fact that gothic fiction is concerned with weather to a much greater extent than any other novelistic subgenre. This focus on and rise in atmosphere in gothic fiction is noted by Radcliffe as a method to produce more chills, to tingle the spine. Joseph Priestley, the leading “aerial philosopher,” is another figure not to be forgotten in this respect, one with whom Radcliffe identified. This chapter is an investigation of Radcliffe’s and Priestley’s sense of atmosphere, and how Radcliffe’s work was possibly influenced by that of Priestley.Less
Ann Radcliffe’s popular romances of the 1790s marked the widespread literary practice of gothic fiction—the key signature of which is atmosphere. Atmosphere in the gothic sense, however, can pertain to two things. Frist is Deidre Lynch’s illuminating view that the shroud which surrounds the gothic page signals a separation with the Enlightenment’s presumptions of transparency. Second is the fact that gothic fiction is concerned with weather to a much greater extent than any other novelistic subgenre. This focus on and rise in atmosphere in gothic fiction is noted by Radcliffe as a method to produce more chills, to tingle the spine. Joseph Priestley, the leading “aerial philosopher,” is another figure not to be forgotten in this respect, one with whom Radcliffe identified. This chapter is an investigation of Radcliffe’s and Priestley’s sense of atmosphere, and how Radcliffe’s work was possibly influenced by that of Priestley.
Fiona Price
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474402965
- eISBN:
- 9781474422116
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474402965.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Chapter One explores how the historical novel emerged in the 1760s as a form which at once employed and interrogated the dominant political narrative of ‘ancient liberties’. The notion of ancient ...
More
Chapter One explores how the historical novel emerged in the 1760s as a form which at once employed and interrogated the dominant political narrative of ‘ancient liberties’. The notion of ancient constitutionalism allowed proposals for reform or for limits on monarchical power to be seen as attempts to ensure stability or, at most, (as with the theory of the Norman Yoke) to return to political origin. Yet for Horace Walpole ancient constitutionalism seems at times a troubled jest; Clara Reeve senses that the motif desperately needs reinforcement; and even after the more radical uses of the theory of the Norman Yoke by the Constitutional Society in the 1780s and 90s, Ann Radcliffe considers it a frozen political fable. Haunted by the spectre of the divine right of kings, in the historical novel the narrative of tradition ultimately proves an insufficient underpinning for the constitution.Less
Chapter One explores how the historical novel emerged in the 1760s as a form which at once employed and interrogated the dominant political narrative of ‘ancient liberties’. The notion of ancient constitutionalism allowed proposals for reform or for limits on monarchical power to be seen as attempts to ensure stability or, at most, (as with the theory of the Norman Yoke) to return to political origin. Yet for Horace Walpole ancient constitutionalism seems at times a troubled jest; Clara Reeve senses that the motif desperately needs reinforcement; and even after the more radical uses of the theory of the Norman Yoke by the Constitutional Society in the 1780s and 90s, Ann Radcliffe considers it a frozen political fable. Haunted by the spectre of the divine right of kings, in the historical novel the narrative of tradition ultimately proves an insufficient underpinning for the constitution.
JoEllen DeLucia
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748695942
- eISBN:
- 9781474408677
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748695942.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter argues that attention to Ann Radcliffe’s use of Scots poetry in the epigraphs of TheMysteries of Udolpho (1794) transforms the female gothic into an historical instead of a psychological ...
More
This chapter argues that attention to Ann Radcliffe’s use of Scots poetry in the epigraphs of TheMysteries of Udolpho (1794) transforms the female gothic into an historical instead of a psychological analytic. In the tension between Udolpho’s representations of female sensibility and its paratext—what Gerard Genette calls the “border” or “threshold” of the text—this chapter finds an uneven and non-linear feminist historiography capable of producing unconventional accounts of women’s experiences of British imperial and commercial growth. Specifically, Radcliffe uses James Thomson’s The Castle of Indolence (1748) and James Beattie’s The Minstrel (1771) as signposts for her heroine’s journey, grafting Emily St. Aubert’s “progress” onto debates about history, the relationship between manners and economic structures, and the place of women in historical narrative.Less
This chapter argues that attention to Ann Radcliffe’s use of Scots poetry in the epigraphs of TheMysteries of Udolpho (1794) transforms the female gothic into an historical instead of a psychological analytic. In the tension between Udolpho’s representations of female sensibility and its paratext—what Gerard Genette calls the “border” or “threshold” of the text—this chapter finds an uneven and non-linear feminist historiography capable of producing unconventional accounts of women’s experiences of British imperial and commercial growth. Specifically, Radcliffe uses James Thomson’s The Castle of Indolence (1748) and James Beattie’s The Minstrel (1771) as signposts for her heroine’s journey, grafting Emily St. Aubert’s “progress” onto debates about history, the relationship between manners and economic structures, and the place of women in historical narrative.
Karin Kukkonen
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- March 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190634766
- eISBN:
- 9780190634780
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190634766.003.0006
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Psycholinguistics / Neurolinguistics / Cognitive Linguistics
This chapter traces the narrative strategies around the situational logic of poetic justice in Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic fiction. On the one hand, Radcliffe constructs tightly coiled “comeuppance ...
More
This chapter traces the narrative strategies around the situational logic of poetic justice in Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic fiction. On the one hand, Radcliffe constructs tightly coiled “comeuppance clockworks” in which the villains of her narratives are swiftly and appropriately punished. On the other hand, she also hides many instances of delayed comeuppance in the manuscripts, interrupted stories, and effigies that fill her narratives, thereby creating a narrative “Zeigarnik effect.” Because comeuppance is either too tight or too loose in Radcliffe’s novels, it never seems to correspond to a human measure of strong reciprocity. At the same time, however, Radcliffe does not introduce any mechanism, such as divine intervention or a strong author figure, which could explain such supernatural reciprocity. Fitting Radcliffe’s strategy of the explained supernatural, the specter of the “superpunisher” (and its epistemic comforts) is raised and disavowed, creating a particularly uncanny situational logic of poetic justice.Less
This chapter traces the narrative strategies around the situational logic of poetic justice in Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic fiction. On the one hand, Radcliffe constructs tightly coiled “comeuppance clockworks” in which the villains of her narratives are swiftly and appropriately punished. On the other hand, she also hides many instances of delayed comeuppance in the manuscripts, interrupted stories, and effigies that fill her narratives, thereby creating a narrative “Zeigarnik effect.” Because comeuppance is either too tight or too loose in Radcliffe’s novels, it never seems to correspond to a human measure of strong reciprocity. At the same time, however, Radcliffe does not introduce any mechanism, such as divine intervention or a strong author figure, which could explain such supernatural reciprocity. Fitting Radcliffe’s strategy of the explained supernatural, the specter of the “superpunisher” (and its epistemic comforts) is raised and disavowed, creating a particularly uncanny situational logic of poetic justice.
Deidre Shauna Lynch
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226183701
- eISBN:
- 9780226183848
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226183848.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter considers the quotation compulsion of the romantic-period gothic novel, interpreting it as a manifestation of the ambivalent canon-love of a fictional mode that knew itself to be ...
More
This chapter considers the quotation compulsion of the romantic-period gothic novel, interpreting it as a manifestation of the ambivalent canon-love of a fictional mode that knew itself to be sub-canonical. Adorned with chapter epigraphs citing Shakespeare, Milton, and others, and modelling through their heroines lessons in literary appreciation, the gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe and her many imitators resembled the canon-forming, nation-building historical anthologies with which they were contemporary. They should be considered an equally important institution of literary transmission, likewise serving to provide the reader access to the heritage that was hers as a member of the reading nation. But while portraying reading as an experience of haunting and assimilating encounters with poetry in particular to encounters with apparitions, gothic novels also brought to view the dark side to reverence for the literature of the dead and to the arrangement that made writing’s pastness crucial to its canonicity.Less
This chapter considers the quotation compulsion of the romantic-period gothic novel, interpreting it as a manifestation of the ambivalent canon-love of a fictional mode that knew itself to be sub-canonical. Adorned with chapter epigraphs citing Shakespeare, Milton, and others, and modelling through their heroines lessons in literary appreciation, the gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe and her many imitators resembled the canon-forming, nation-building historical anthologies with which they were contemporary. They should be considered an equally important institution of literary transmission, likewise serving to provide the reader access to the heritage that was hers as a member of the reading nation. But while portraying reading as an experience of haunting and assimilating encounters with poetry in particular to encounters with apparitions, gothic novels also brought to view the dark side to reverence for the literature of the dead and to the arrangement that made writing’s pastness crucial to its canonicity.
Joseph Drury
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198792383
- eISBN:
- 9780191834394
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198792383.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
Though famous for its visual effects, the most important feature of Ann Radcliffe’s gothic fiction is its use of mysterious music and indistinct sounds. According to late eighteenth-century vitalist ...
More
Though famous for its visual effects, the most important feature of Ann Radcliffe’s gothic fiction is its use of mysterious music and indistinct sounds. According to late eighteenth-century vitalist physicians, the nerves vibrated in response to external impressions like the strings on a musical instrument. Alternately pampered and overstimulated by modern conveniences, the nerves lost the ‘tone’ necessary for physical and mental health. With the rise of a new ‘expressive’ aesthetics that emphasized literature’s power, like music, to stimulate affective responses rather than ideas, novels soon became implicated in this discourse. Like ‘ethereal’ instruments such as the Aeolian harp and the glass harmonica, Radcliffe’s narrative machinery was to administer therapeutic vibrations and excite imaginative reveries that reconnected the body to nature’s vital resources. In The Mysteries of Udolpho, however, Radcliffe warns that this machinery, if administered to an already debilitated body, could cause nervous pathologies and excite uncanny hallucinations.Less
Though famous for its visual effects, the most important feature of Ann Radcliffe’s gothic fiction is its use of mysterious music and indistinct sounds. According to late eighteenth-century vitalist physicians, the nerves vibrated in response to external impressions like the strings on a musical instrument. Alternately pampered and overstimulated by modern conveniences, the nerves lost the ‘tone’ necessary for physical and mental health. With the rise of a new ‘expressive’ aesthetics that emphasized literature’s power, like music, to stimulate affective responses rather than ideas, novels soon became implicated in this discourse. Like ‘ethereal’ instruments such as the Aeolian harp and the glass harmonica, Radcliffe’s narrative machinery was to administer therapeutic vibrations and excite imaginative reveries that reconnected the body to nature’s vital resources. In The Mysteries of Udolpho, however, Radcliffe warns that this machinery, if administered to an already debilitated body, could cause nervous pathologies and excite uncanny hallucinations.
Daniel M. Gross
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226485034
- eISBN:
- 9780226485171
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226485171.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Chapter 3 continues to make the case for a literary mode—the sentimental—while explaining what sort of things happen when the genre shifts from literary nonfiction—that is, the slave narrative, to ...
More
Chapter 3 continues to make the case for a literary mode—the sentimental—while explaining what sort of things happen when the genre shifts from literary nonfiction—that is, the slave narrative, to the Gothic novel. The chapter provides the next case study where this time the environments, technically understood with the help of perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson, make people terribly uncomfortable to the point of becoming unhinged. This chapter on the environment serves as a particular kind of ecocriticism, while at the same time energetically distinguishing itself from "literary Darwinism" and related versions of literary criticism where the ancient environment of evolutionary psychology exerts undue pressure on the scene. Here instead of evolutionary psychology, the perceptual psychology of Gibson provides the basic definition of an environment. The chapter also shows how some literary criticism that falls under the heading of Cognitive Approaches—including work by Elaine Scarry, cognitive rhetoric à la George Lakoff, and David Herman who practices Umwelt research—already benefits from an environmental approach referencing Gibson.Less
Chapter 3 continues to make the case for a literary mode—the sentimental—while explaining what sort of things happen when the genre shifts from literary nonfiction—that is, the slave narrative, to the Gothic novel. The chapter provides the next case study where this time the environments, technically understood with the help of perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson, make people terribly uncomfortable to the point of becoming unhinged. This chapter on the environment serves as a particular kind of ecocriticism, while at the same time energetically distinguishing itself from "literary Darwinism" and related versions of literary criticism where the ancient environment of evolutionary psychology exerts undue pressure on the scene. Here instead of evolutionary psychology, the perceptual psychology of Gibson provides the basic definition of an environment. The chapter also shows how some literary criticism that falls under the heading of Cognitive Approaches—including work by Elaine Scarry, cognitive rhetoric à la George Lakoff, and David Herman who practices Umwelt research—already benefits from an environmental approach referencing Gibson.
Cynthia Wall
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226467665
- eISBN:
- 9780226467979
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226467979.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter gathers together the various patterns of eighteenth-century architectural, typographical, and linguistic approaches into an analysis of the changes in narrative patterns. ...
More
This chapter gathers together the various patterns of eighteenth-century architectural, typographical, and linguistic approaches into an analysis of the changes in narrative patterns. Typographically, the works of Bunyan, Defoe, and Haywood occupy the older typographical field; stylistically, they are more associated with the “loose" or "running" style, paratactic and incremental. The late eighteenth century buffed and polished the Ciceronian periodic sentence, a form that resembled the architectural approach. Radcliffe’s insistent prepositional phrases, Burney’s narrative interiors (both architectural and psychological), and Austen’s innovations in free indirect discourse, are all grounded in the same aesthetic and psychological shifts that were reshaping landscapes, typographies, and grammars.Less
This chapter gathers together the various patterns of eighteenth-century architectural, typographical, and linguistic approaches into an analysis of the changes in narrative patterns. Typographically, the works of Bunyan, Defoe, and Haywood occupy the older typographical field; stylistically, they are more associated with the “loose" or "running" style, paratactic and incremental. The late eighteenth century buffed and polished the Ciceronian periodic sentence, a form that resembled the architectural approach. Radcliffe’s insistent prepositional phrases, Burney’s narrative interiors (both architectural and psychological), and Austen’s innovations in free indirect discourse, are all grounded in the same aesthetic and psychological shifts that were reshaping landscapes, typographies, and grammars.
Sarah Houghton-Walker
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780198719472
- eISBN:
- 9780191788581
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198719472.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter considers some of the key aesthetic theories of the Romantic period and their ramifications for depictions of gypsies, understanding aesthetic discourse as another pressure bearing upon ...
More
This chapter considers some of the key aesthetic theories of the Romantic period and their ramifications for depictions of gypsies, understanding aesthetic discourse as another pressure bearing upon these representations. The categories of sensibility, curiosity, the picturesque, the sublime, and the Gothic are examined in order to explore the ways in which contemporary aesthetic discourses might have problematized or encouraged the inclusion of gypsies in literary texts. The chapter considers the writings of theorists including Hume, Smith, Burke, Gilpin, Repton, and Price, alongside those whose writing is marked by or challenges their ideas (including Hannah More, Mary Robinson, George Crabbe, William Combe, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, and Jane Austen).Less
This chapter considers some of the key aesthetic theories of the Romantic period and their ramifications for depictions of gypsies, understanding aesthetic discourse as another pressure bearing upon these representations. The categories of sensibility, curiosity, the picturesque, the sublime, and the Gothic are examined in order to explore the ways in which contemporary aesthetic discourses might have problematized or encouraged the inclusion of gypsies in literary texts. The chapter considers the writings of theorists including Hume, Smith, Burke, Gilpin, Repton, and Price, alongside those whose writing is marked by or challenges their ideas (including Hannah More, Mary Robinson, George Crabbe, William Combe, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, and Jane Austen).
Cynthia Wall
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226467665
- eISBN:
- 9780226467979
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226467979.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
The textual topography of the eighteenth-century page experienced its own re-landscaping that was a sort of mirrored obverse of the picturesque movement. That is, where the sweeping lawns and ...
More
The textual topography of the eighteenth-century page experienced its own re-landscaping that was a sort of mirrored obverse of the picturesque movement. That is, where the sweeping lawns and reflecting lakes of Capability Brown had irritated the likes of Gilpin, Knight, and Price into the landscape activism of the picturesque, with its sharp contrasts, broken angles, and “fantastic roots of trees,” so the thickly textured page of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with its capitalized Common Nouns, long ƒ, and italicized Names and Places, was rather suddenly scraped smooth and spaciously re-ordered. The Noun was decapitated, the internal ƒ curled up into s, and italics straightened up. But that smooth, uniform text produced its own underground picturesque. With the dominant Noun no longer looming over the other words in a sentence and the self-dramatizing italics effaced, the things in between could be more visible--as, for example, punctuation and prepositions.Less
The textual topography of the eighteenth-century page experienced its own re-landscaping that was a sort of mirrored obverse of the picturesque movement. That is, where the sweeping lawns and reflecting lakes of Capability Brown had irritated the likes of Gilpin, Knight, and Price into the landscape activism of the picturesque, with its sharp contrasts, broken angles, and “fantastic roots of trees,” so the thickly textured page of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with its capitalized Common Nouns, long ƒ, and italicized Names and Places, was rather suddenly scraped smooth and spaciously re-ordered. The Noun was decapitated, the internal ƒ curled up into s, and italics straightened up. But that smooth, uniform text produced its own underground picturesque. With the dominant Noun no longer looming over the other words in a sentence and the self-dramatizing italics effaced, the things in between could be more visible--as, for example, punctuation and prepositions.
Robert Miles
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- June 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199574803
- eISBN:
- 9780191869747
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199574803.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This chapter discusses the Gothic from 1797 to 1820. The Gothic reached its apogee in the late 1790s, when it secured a third share of the novel market, after which it withered. From 1797 onward, the ...
More
This chapter discusses the Gothic from 1797 to 1820. The Gothic reached its apogee in the late 1790s, when it secured a third share of the novel market, after which it withered. From 1797 onward, the Gothic seems inseparable from an anti-Gothic shadow that materialized in myriad forms, from ad hoc animadversions found in the reviews mocking the genre's formulaic character, to full-blown parodies. While the quantity of novels advertising themselves as products of the ‘terror-system’ declined during the first two decades of the century, the Gothic migrated downmarket, sustaining itself, post-1820, by embedding itself in other ‘genres’. Putting aside the tale, which the Gothic dominated, one quickly perceives that the Gothic is a variety of the novel—one of its subgenres best labelled ‘romance’. Moreover, one can best and most accurately represent the Gothic novel during the period as the proliferation of several schools, above all, of Radcliffe, Godwin, Lewis, and Schiller.Less
This chapter discusses the Gothic from 1797 to 1820. The Gothic reached its apogee in the late 1790s, when it secured a third share of the novel market, after which it withered. From 1797 onward, the Gothic seems inseparable from an anti-Gothic shadow that materialized in myriad forms, from ad hoc animadversions found in the reviews mocking the genre's formulaic character, to full-blown parodies. While the quantity of novels advertising themselves as products of the ‘terror-system’ declined during the first two decades of the century, the Gothic migrated downmarket, sustaining itself, post-1820, by embedding itself in other ‘genres’. Putting aside the tale, which the Gothic dominated, one quickly perceives that the Gothic is a variety of the novel—one of its subgenres best labelled ‘romance’. Moreover, one can best and most accurately represent the Gothic novel during the period as the proliferation of several schools, above all, of Radcliffe, Godwin, Lewis, and Schiller.
