“‘What are men to rocks and mountains?'” The content of Ann Radcliffe’s Landscapes


Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840), Man and Woman [?] Gazing at the Moon (1819)

My friendly (and kind) readers,

Will I hope remember last week I told of how I had come to decide to fulfill a long-held desire, to write a paper where I would have to gaze at, study, write about the landscapes of Ann Radcliffe, visual sources and her verbal fantasias. Well I did so and am chuffed to be able to report that proposal has been accepted for presentation at the South Central Society for Eighteenth Century Studies coming conference at in the Grove Park Inn (Asheville, South Carolina) whose topic is (to me) the delightful Panoramas and Prospects (vistas and visions if you prefer).

I’ve put the proposal on my site. I used Elizabeth Bennet’s enthusiastic outburst upon conemplating her coming journey with her uncle and aunt Gardiner (at that point) to the Lake District: “‘What are men to rocks and mountains?’: The Content of Ann Radcliffe’s Landscapes”.

I know the title there is “contentlessness,” but that is yukky made-up word and I’m not sure I wouldn’t do better simply saying content — if you read my brief two paragraphs, you will see I mean to show they are not contentless.


Alfonso Simonetti, Ancor Non Torna, illustration for 19th century Italian translation of Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest

Radcliffe’s texts have been long close to my heart. I’ve been writing on line about her for years, not just blogs, and foremother poet essays, but meditating at length her Sicilian Romance, and Romance of the Forest. I’ve taught her books, and now will try to write professionally about her.

My idea will come from my studies of Oliphant’s gothic, Beatrice Battaglia and Italian studies of romanticism and Austen, and my sense of how Radcliffe coped with her distress by projecting it onto visions and then gradually worked out stories which delved a liberal Whig, a Foxite (yes) or Girondist point of view.

Ellen

Author: ellenandjim

Ellen Moody holds a Ph.D in British Literature and taught in American senior colleges for more than 40 years. Since 2013 she has been teaching older retired people at two Oscher Institutes of Lifelong Learning, one attached to American University (Washington, DC) and other to George Mason University (in Fairfax, Va). She is also a literary scholar with specialties in 18th century literature, translation, early modern and women's studies, film, nineteenth and 20th century literature and of course Trollope. For Trollope she wrote a book on her experiences of reading Trollope on the Internet with others, some more academic style essays, two on film adaptations, the most recent on Trollope's depiction of settler colonialism: "On Inventing a New Country." Here is her website: http://www.jimandellen.org/ellen/ No part of this blog may be reproduced without express permission from the author/blog owner. Linking, on the other hand, is highly encouraged!

6 thoughts on ““‘What are men to rocks and mountains?'” The content of Ann Radcliffe’s Landscapes”

  2. Ellen, I think your proposal sounds fascinating. I think at some point we should read one of Radcliffe’s novels as a group so you can inform us more about Radcliffe’s landscapes.

    Tyler Tichelaar

    Reply

  3. My paper on Trollope would’ve been based on extensive reading and study of primary materials (illustrations) not discussed anywhere else. This will be secondary material.

    I did have another little lift. The opening of my chapter for the book on JA and Bath I never wrote will be published in another small chapbook like publication by the local JASNA-DC. It’s about how we (Jim, Izzy and I) went in search of Austen in Bath. The part about Beechen Cliff will be published accompanied by personally taken photos of Prior Park which is in Bath:

    http://www.jimandellen.org/austen/BathVisit.html

    http://www.jimandellen.org/tripsblog/244.html

    It’ll be like my “JA and Food” which I mean to put on my website next.

    E.M.

    Reply
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  5. She is really an extraordinary writer. I’m just now awed by the topographical, historical and archeaological books that went into her imaginative world and came out as these travel re-creations and gothic books. Her poetry is her prose but convention hath it poetry is verse so for today these brief pieces I’ve not put on the list before:

    Sicilian Romance:

    SONG.

    Pur the rich libation high;
    The sparkling cup to Bacchus fill;
    His joys shall dance in ev’ry eye,
    And chase the forms of future ill!

    Quick the magic raptures steal
    O’er the fancy kindling brain,
    Warm the heart with social zeal,
    And song and laughter reign.

    Then visions of pleasure shall float on our sight,
    While light bounding our spirits shall flow;
    And the god shall impart a fine sense of delight,
    Which in vain sober mortals would know.”

    Untitled:

    Far on the rocky shores the surges sound,
    The lashing whirlwinds cleave the vast profound;
    While high in air, amid the rising storm,
    Driving the blast, sits Danger’s black’ning form.

    See also the poem which ends this blog on female gothic:

    http://www.jimandellen.org/austenblog/949.html

    This prose piece put into the posthumous Gaston really comes from a journal of a trip to Penshurst never published:

    http://books.google.com/books?id=woUTAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=Radcliffe+%22I+think+I+see+in+glimpses%22&source=bl&ots=eOuzvx-75X&sig=4mS5uBiuaqJ1K4yFu8u7Crhl0UE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OoIET9ueGOjw0gHCteH8Cg&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

    Ellen

    Reply
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