![]() ![]() (2) This essay aims to revisit Tompkins's statement that Radcliffe aimed to avoid the 'homely and grotesque', contending that she used servant figures such as Annette and Dorothee in The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Paulo in The Italian (1797) to effect a moderation of excessive sensibility and counter a belief in superstition and the supernatural. The homely and the grotesque were alien from her muse'. She argues that to Radcliffe, romance 'implied dignity and remoteness, and her cult of both qualities was conscious. Tompkins observes that Ann Radcliffe filled up the background with soubrettes, brigands, ecclesiastics and faithful servants and all these people develop, in her later books, a power of appropriate gesture and resonant phrase that carries them triumphantly through their strong scenes. In The Popular Novel in England, 1770-1800, J. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |