ITALIAN R5B Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Terry Castle, Montague Summers, Thermometer
21 May 2018
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#20 3/7 Wednesday
“When it is not treated as a joke, Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) is primarily
remembered today for its most striking formal device—the much-maligned ‘explained
supernatural.’ [Sir Walter] Scott, we may recall, was one of the first to blame Radcliffe for
supplying anticlimactic ‘rational’ explanations for the various eerie and uncanny events in her
novels, and in Lives of Eminent Novelists (1824) chastised her for not ‘boldly avowing the use of
supernatural machinery’ in her greatest fiction. Jane Austen’s satiric depredations in Northanger
Abbey are even better known. But modern critics have been similarly put out—that is, when they
have bothered to write about Radcliffe at all. ‘A stupid convention,’ says Montague Summers of
her admittedly intrusive rationalizations. ‘The vice in her method,’ writes another. A few hapless
defenders merely compound the damage: ‘the poor lady’s romances,’ wrote Andrew Lang,
‘would have been excluded from families, if she had not provided normal explanations of her
groans, moans, voices, lights, and wandering figures.’ Requiescat in pace” (Castle 121).
Terry Castle, The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention
of the Uncanny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Ann Radcliffe and the “Explained Supernatural”
● Underwhelming, disappointing
● Also redirects terror from the supernatural to terror of human nature, the darkness of
human nature is more horrifying than the sublime of the supernatural
Structure and Argumentation
Common Problems with Paragraph Development
● Internal logic of a body paragraph
○ Claim – Textual Evidence – Analysis via Close Reading
● Overall order and organization of body paragraphs
● Restating the same major claim with each piece of evidence
○ We see X through diction.
○ We see X through syntax.
○ We see X through allusions.
● Is X the only lens through which to understand the various literary elements? Likely not.
This leads to a very clear organization, but it won’t strike your reader as particularly
analytical.
● (This is basically five-paragraph form)
● Providing multiple pieces of evidence with different claims without fully exploring how
they relate to and build on each other
○ We see X in this passage.
○ We see Y in this passage.
○ We see Z in this passage.
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
But modern critics have been similarly put out that is, when they have bothered to write about radcliffe at all. A stupid convention," says montague summers of her admittedly intrusive rationalizations. A few hapless defenders merely compound the damage: the poor lady"s romances," wrote andrew lang, Would have been excluded from families, if she had not provided normal explanations of her groans, moans, voices, lights, and wandering figures. " requiescat in pace (castle 121). Terry castle, the female thermometer: eighteenth-century culture and the invention of the uncanny (oxford: oxford university press, 1995). Also redirects terror from the supernatural to terror of human nature, the darkness of human nature is more horrifying than the sublime of the supernatural. Claim textual evidence analysis via close reading. Overall order and organization of body paragraphs. Restating the same major claim with each piece of evidence.
