Gothic Trajectories: Latitudinarian Theology and the Novels of Ann Radcliffe

Abstract

Since the earliest biographical writings--Sir Walter Scott's assessment and the memoir attached to Radcliffe's posthumously published novel Gaston de Blondeville--the novels of Ann Radcliffe have been located in the trajectory by which the generic norms of Gothic fiction developed. Criticism has placed Radcliffe by anticipation in the context of subsequent developments in the Gothic genre. She is accepted as an important innovator but is also seen as having fallen short of realizing the genre's full potential, largely owing to her penchant for explaining away supernatural events by naturalistic means. The overall assessment of this mode of criticism is well summarized by T.N. Talfourd: Mrs Radcliffe may fairly be considered as the inventor of a new style of romance; equally distant from the old tales of chivalry and magic, and from modern representations of credible incidents and living manners. Her works partially exhibit the charms of each species of composition. Such criticism was written some thirty years after the novels themselves, and thus has the benefit of seeing the generic trajectory of Gothic fiction in a way Radcliffe herself could not at the time of writing. This article is available in Eighteenth-Century Fiction: http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/ecf/vol15/iss3/11 Gothic Trajectories: Latitudinarian Theology and the Novels of Ann Radcliffe