Radcliffe

Question 1

In several sentences, trace the treatment of landscape from the Enlightenment to Radcliffe

Answer 1

At one point the landscape seemed to hold out a possibility for God’s continued involvement in nature after the age of cosmic emblems. If God (or any higher power) was still involved in the world, the landscape reflected an immanent meaning. The landscape became a kind of Borgesian map with a perfect 1:1 ratio–each detail was, but also meant. (See Thomson’s The Seasons). In Radcliffe we see a new terror: that under the map there is always only another map–a terror about the ultimate falseness of appearances (see Prelude book 7)

Question 2

Paraphrase a passage from Udolpho that supports my reading about the landscape and the terror it produces (begins “her present life appeared like the…”)

Answer 2

“Her present life appeared like the dream of a distempered imagination, or like one of those frightful fictions, in which the wild genius of the poets sometimes delighted. Reflection brought only regret, and anticipation terror.”

Question 3

“Her present life appeared like the dream of a distempered imagination, or like one of those frightful fictions, in which the wild genius of the poets sometimes delighted. Reflection brought only regret, and anticipation terror. How often did she wish to ‘steal the lark’s wing, and mount the swiftest gale,’ that Languedoc and repose might once more be hers!” What is the significance of the quotation she chooses?

Answer 3

It is from James Cawthorn, whose poetry closely imitates Pope’s (the line comes from “Abelard to Eloisa,” his response to Pope’s “Eloisa to Abelard”). There’s a suggestion that she is pining after a moment when poetry was about security rather than the terrifying fictions she sees now.