Frightened into Method: A Study of Literary Historiography in Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest (1791)

Irving, Roslyn (2023) Frightened into Method: A Study of Literary Historiography in Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest (1791). PhD thesis, University of Liverpool.

Text Roslyn_Irving_Final_Thesis.pdf - Author Accepted Manuscript Access to this file is embargoed until 1 January 2029. Download (1MB)

Abstract

This thesis reads Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest (1791) as a key transition point in the Gothic novel as a historiographical form. Beginning by considering the reviews of Radcliffe’s novels widely attributed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I demonstrate how The Romance of the Forest is an underappreciated text within Radcliffe’s oeuvre as it offers a unique sense of progression in romance narratives. Each chapter of the thesis considers a different theme in Radcliffe’s novel, which builds into an original reading of temporality and method. The opening chapters begin by establishing what Radcliffe’s version of Romanticism might entail. Chapters Two through Four explore the use of historically informed (and shifting) spaces and figures, such as architectural ruins and patriarchs, which configure competing socio-political structures and constitutions. Drawing on a new historical philosophy proposed by Eelco Runia (2014), this thesis also engages with the ways Radcliffe constructs a non-linear, layered, and generative historiography. The final chapters extend discussions around ‘failed’ heroism and the role of women in Radcliffe’s novel, anticipating discussions of Edmund Burke, masculinity, and (gendered) narrative coherence into the nineteenth century. This thesis strengthens existing scholarship on Radcliffe within the Romantic movement more broadly by relating The Romance of the Forest to early nineteenth-century Coleridgean discussions of the Gothic and method, demonstrating the text to be more than a conventional romance. Whilst challenging some recent critics of Radcliffe’s ‘radical’ modernity, this thesis contends that The Romance of the Forest is an organised text which offers progress, writes women as methodical narrative agents, and does this through a sense of history in the present.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Ann Radcliffe, Gothic, Coleridge, Historiography, Eighteenth Century, Method, Temporality
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of the Arts
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	30 Jan 2024 08:52
Last Modified:	30 Jan 2024 08:52
DOI:	10.17638/03176652
Supervisors:	Duggett, Thomas Baines, Paul
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3176652