#Anne Radcliffe

[cynicalclassicist]

Reading The Mysteries of Udolpho now and am really reminded of Sansa's Vale plotline. As in, I am almost certain that GRRM was inspired by this seminal Gothic novel. I was reading the bit today where Count Morano comes into her room and hits Emilie's dog and something like that happens with Sansa, Marillion and an old blind dog.

[timothywinters]

I gave up on the Mysteries of Udolpho- I just don’t care that much about early Gothic horror and I find the prose style overwrought- however the funniest thing that happened before I gave up on it, funnier even than everyone knowing Venetian glass explodes when exposed to poison, is that Radcliffe makes a point of having the heroine stop to buy a hat so she won’t be scandalously bareheaded while running for her life

[marsbymoonlight]

“Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes and nearly annihilates them"

Anne Radcliffe, 1826

[an-extraordinary-fate]

This is great information. I also need to tackle Udolpho. I feel like I’ve done my Radcliffe time with The Sicilian Romance, but I need to give it a try. The length just holds me back.

In Austen’s Love and Freindship found in her collected juvenilia you get a good taste of her satire on the cult of sensibility. It’s really worth a read for context on S&S and NA.

Reading The Mysteries of Udolpho (second try, much easier in physical book rather than ebook form) to get context on Northanger Abbey, but so far (about a hundred pages in) it’s mostly giving me context on Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility.

The focus on dramatic natural scenery, and poetry and music, and the emotions these things evoke, and bonding with people over these things…it’s what Marianne is all about. It’s the Romantic sensibility. The Mysteries of Udolpho has one line in particular: Virtue and taste are nearly the same, for virtue is little more than active taste, and the most delicate affections of each combine in real love. Another line says that only a person with some true “simplicity of heart” (honesty, innocence, guilelessness) can truly take joy in nature.

This fits with so many of Marianne’s sentiments. She wonders how Elinor can love Edward when neither poetry nor nature evoke any passion or particular taste in him. She falls head-over-heels for Willoughby – not just from their dramatic meeting, or compliments, or his looks, but because they express the same tastes and loves in poetry and in nature. The comfort and pleasure of a small home with family rather than a mansion with many guests are the theme of the start of Udolpho; Willoughby’s paean to a cottage is right in line with it. And if taste is virtue, then how can Marianne be wrong to trust him?

Northanger Abbey is Jane Austen’s first written (though not first-published) novel, and it’s a lighthearted satire on the Gothic melodrama of novels like The Mysteries of Udolpho. But Sense and Sensibility, though still having some comic figures and situations and plenty of satire, feels more urgent in its themes in this context – as though, along with her other reasons for writing it, Jane Austen was trying to say to young women of her time, question this, doubt this, a young man’s expressed views on art and literature and poetry and natural beauty, when talking to a pretty and romantic girl, are not necessarily a sure guide to his character.

[fairwellersmustache]

FoL Book Haul

Went to the mall today and the local library had rented out a storefront to hold their friends of the library sale. I didn’t set out to get all classics but when confronted by a sea of paperbacks, you cling to any name you recognize.

Anyway here’s what I got and why:

Dracula by Bram Stoker - my only copy was annotated by me in my freshman year of college, so needless to say, I can’t go back. A clean, fresh copy just in time for Dracula Daily!

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton - I’ve always been told I should read Wharton and though I wanted to, I never got around to it. I haven’t even let myself watch the movie until I’ve read it, so this is my chance.

Murder After Hours by Agatha Christie - I have a lifetime goal of reading every Agatha Christie or at least every Poirot, so whenever I see one I haven’t read (which are most of them) I pick it up. This one seems to be set in the quintessential English manor during a weekend party, can’t wait!

The Romance of the Forrest by Anne Radcliffe - I don’t know much about Radcliffe or pre-19 c lit, but I’ve been listening and relistening to Northanger Abbey lately, and what is Northanger Abbey if not one long commercial for the mother of gothic lit?

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell - I read Gaskell’s Ruth in college and have of course seen North and South a few times. I always meant to return to her work, but the only other book I have is Wives and Daughters, which is a whole brick of a book, so I hope this one will be a way to ease back in.

Total: $4.50

[asoftepiloguemylove]

THE SUN COMES UP AGAIN // LIVING DESPITE IT ALL

Anne Lamott Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life // José Saramago Cain // Kill Your Darlings (2013) dir. John Krokidas // Katie Maria The Memory of a Memory // Cheryl Strayed Tiny Beautiful Things // Undertale (2015) cr. Toby Fox // pinterest // SEVENTEEN: HIT THE ROAD episode 10 A Time To Face Myself (via @kwonhochi) // pinterest // カウボーイビバップ Cowboy Bebop (1988-1999) cr. Hajime Yatate // pinterest // pinterest // Mary Oliver For Example

[jaeausten]

Your imagination has brought you independence. At a cost to me and my husband. Poor William.

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Mexican Gothic

Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this the tale of the big gothic house Moreno-Garcia: in Mexico Moreno-Garcia: you might even call it Moreno-Garcia: mexican gothic

Moreno-Garcia: so there's this debutante from Mexico City Moreno-Garcia: and she has to visit her cousin who's married this weird english guy Moreno-Garcia: and now lives in this big creepy house in the boonies with his weirdly english family Moreno-Garcia: being weirdly english Moreno-Garcia: so the mexican woman from the big city has to deal with these weird secluded in-bred white people Lovecraft: what kind of topsy turvy world is this Lovecraft: up is down, black is white Lovecraft: i just don't know what to believe! Moreno-Garcia: these english people, let me tell you Moreno-Garcia: they love to just sit around, being mopey, eating shitty english food, refusing to mix with the locals, formulating weird race science theories Lovecraft: i really don't see the problem Mary Shelley: sup fuckers King: oh mary you're just in time, silvia was telling a gothic story Shelley: oh she's gonna tell a gothic story eh? you hear that fellas Ann Radcliffe: i hear that Matthew "Monk" Lewis: is that so Shelley: my original goths will be the judge of this

Shelley: you think you're gonna do some gothic? that's cute Shelley: has the family patriarch got a dead wife? Moreno-Garcia: he's got two Shelley: oh damn i take it back Shelley: that IS gothic Lewis: that's hard core Radcliffe: TWO dead wives?!??!

Moreno-Garcia: and there's a family plot that's got marble busts of the dead wife Shelley: oh hell yeah that's the way to do it Lewis: you gotta have the busts Radcliffe: oh yeah definitely you gotta have em

Shelley: how about this protagonist? pale, likes to faint, right? Moreno-Garcia: no she loves to party and smoke cigarettes Shelley: Lewis: Radcliffe: Shelley: damn what a twist! Lewis: i never considered that angle Radcliffe: a whole new grid

[dionysiaproductions]

Today At Pemberley, the 29th of August:

Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy was seen walking to town, escorted only by Ann Radcliffe’s novel, “The Romance of The Forest.” Long purported to be a great reader, Mrs. Darcy kept the book before her face for the entirety of the two mile walk, avoiding stumbling through some great literary power of non-visual awareness.

It has since become a trend among the young women of Derbyshire to read and walk, leading to countless injuries.

Future days at Pemberley here

[gayestshakespearecouples]

THE GRAND FINALE

Images from:

Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead staged by National Theatre, 2017

The Public Theatre, 2009

[kajaono]

Languedoc

Radcliffe: What a beautiful, beautiful place. Ten pages are not enough to capture this beauty

Dumas:… Woah, those are some ugly ass olive trees!

[jgroffdaily]

Recent photos and sightings, including Jonathan and cast with Ann Morrison.

[showmethesneer]

How is the first mention of the Udolfo castle on page 115?!

[aniaks]

Silence is sometimes eloquence.

The Italian by Ann Radcliffe

[diana-andraste]

She contemplated the past, and viewed the present, and when she compared them, the contrast struck her with astonishment.

The whole appeared like one of those sudden transitions so frequent in dreams . . .

Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest

[ieidolon]

I love reading 18th century novels because what do you mean the obviously awful aunt is presented as morally inferior to the heroine's father specifically because she doesn't judge people on their appearance or assertions, but by their actions 💀