≫ Read Free The Mysteries of Udolpho Penguin Classics Ann Radcliffe Jacqueline Howard 9780140437591 Books

The Mysteries of Udolpho Penguin Classics Ann Radcliffe Jacqueline Howard 9780140437591 Books

Download As PDF : The Mysteries of Udolpho Penguin Classics Ann Radcliffe Jacqueline Howard 9780140437591 Books

The Mysteries of Udolpho Penguin Classics Ann Radcliffe Jacqueline Howard 9780140437591 Books

This book is a literary adventure! A must read for any classic enthusiast. Over the summer I stumbled upon Ann Radcliffe and The Mysteries of Udolpho by reading Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. Although Northanger Abbey is comical, it pays deference to Udolpho and sparked my curiosity. The main character of Northanger, Catherine spent the majority of the book reading Udolpho. I almost wished that I had read both books simultaneously.

Now as I am about to finish Udolpho (all 632 pages), I'm a bit sad because I will miss it. Radcliffe's language is rich, descriptive and beautiful. She is the artist of an incredibly layered mystery. As an American, I've read a great deal of traditional Gothic Literature, but never any Radcliffe. The descriptive passages transport the reader to another world. Udolpho sparked my imagination, much in the same way it sparked Catherine Moreland's in Northanger Abbey.

If you endeavor to read this book, as it is an investment, prepare to be contemplative. The book has a great deal of thrills and intrigue along with beautiful poetry and quotes from some of the greatest works and translations in the English Canon. I'm hoping someone will make this book into a masterpiece theater mini-series. It would be highly rated.


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The Mysteries of Udolpho Penguin Classics Ann Radcliffe Jacqueline Howard 9780140437591 Books Reviews

I love these old novels, and this one is truly a classic. It’s not a quick read, but it is a worthy one.
As a Jane Austen fan I had looked for the 'Mysteries of Udolpho' for years. I was so pleased to find a version of this very old novel for my . The writing style is great, taking you right into the action. The description of scenery is wonderful too. The plot devices are a little heavy handed though. Would a man suffering from a serious disease take a pleasure trip through rugged terrain exposing his beloved daughter to every peril? He would if the author wanted to make the heroine a damsel in distress.

I give this novel four stars for it's historical research value and it's writing style. But to be honest, I have yet to finish the book. Things are so thickly broadcasted that I already know the ending. Still if you are a Jane Austen fan you just have to get this, right?
I have been intrigued by this novel for years, but I only knew Udolpho by reputation until I finally read the novel recently. Many studies of Gothic fiction cite Radcliffe's novel as a classic Gothic text, one of the early examples that set the standard for the genre as we now think of it. Scholars of the Female Gothic subgenre in particular point to Udolpho as an early example, mostly due to Emily St. Aubert's perfect turn as the helpless female heroine who became a stock character in early Gothic fiction. Then, of course, I read Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey in a college seminar and imagined Udolpho to be a laugh-worthy, melodramatic, fake horror fest. I can't say there aren't any laughable moments (Emily's poems), or that there isn't melodrama (lots of fainting; the parting scene between Emily and Valancourt at the end of Volume I), or even that there isn't some fake horror (all of the "mysteries" are explained by the novel's close); however, Radcliffe's novel defied my expectations in more ways than it reaffirmed them.

The Oxford World's Classics edition with the introduction by Terry Castle is the only edition I've read, but I recommend it particularly because of the introduction, which I found very interesting and insightful after finishing the novel. One point that Castle makes is that despite the novel's Gothic label, Udolpho is more like "a disconcerting textual hybrid." The multi-generic nature of the novel is one of the features that most surprised me; it takes quite a while for Emily to become imprisoned in Udolpho and what precedes her time there is almost anti-Gothic. Emily has perfect parents and the perfect upbringing, though she begins to suffer relatively early on when her mother dies. After this point, she and her father embark on a long trip across France, described at length by Radcliffe in what Castle terms "a bizarre quasi-travelogue." Here we get super-detailed descriptions of natural scenery and of the innate goodness of the St. Aubert clan. Yes, some of the nature described could be filed under "sublime," and such descriptions are standard in many Gothic texts. They are also standard in many Romantic texts, and while the overlap between those two genres/movements is significant, for some reason the Gothic has been viewed as the dark, popular (ew!) sibling of the (maybe) sunnier (self-satisfied?), high-art-producing Romanticism. While the St. Auberts' innocence and goodness make them prime targets for our evil Italian villains (Montoni, primarily), they do spend a lot of their time happily exploring nature, and even after several tragedies befall her and dampen her spirits (and make her faint a lot), Emily is relatively cheerful at times. In other words, the mood is not always Gothic in the novel; indeed, it's probably Gothic less often than it is something else. And then besides the travel narrative, there are also those poems that Emily composes on a whim, about sea nymphs and weary travelers. Radcliffe also incorporates excerpts from poetry into her prose, along with lines from Shakespeare plays, and she begins each chapter with epigraphs from other works. I think that in many ways, the mixing of genres in the novel ultimately makes it a more interesting and more complex text.

Udolpho is a very long novel (almost 700 pages), but, as an insanely popular best-seller in the late 18th century, Radcliffe's work was apparently quite a page-turner. Even Austen's Henry Tilney admits that after hijacking his younger sister's copy of the novel, he "could not lay down again; I remember finishing it in two days--my hair standing on end the whole time." For modern readers, there's not going to be much in Udolpho that is particularly scary, but Radcliffe does create suspense by introducing mysterious plot elements and not resolving those elements for, literally, hundreds of pages. But because all of those elements are, indeed, resolved, and any potentially supernatural phenomena are explained away, the novel isn't really about scaring the reader at all. Instead, we are invited to witness, as many other reviewers have noted, the coming-of-age of the heroine, as she struggles to overcome her passion and superstition to live a life governed by reason and logic. At the same time, however, I agree with Castle that Radcliffe aims "to reawaken in her readers a sense of the numinous - of invisible forces at work in the world." These forces are not exactly supernatural, though; instead, "Radcliffe represents the human mind itself as a kind of supernatural entity." In this sense, Udolpho is truly a Gothic classic as a result of its interest not in mysterious external forces, but in the way in which the human mind registers such forces, and how it attempts to understand and work through them. The Gothic's preoccupation with human psychology is more often-commented on in response to American Gothic works like Poe's short stories or Female Gothic classics like Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," but I see this as a primary interest of Radcliffe's in Udolpho, as well.

I have given the novel five stars, which reflects my personal enjoyment of the work and my interest in the themes and issues it raises for a reader. It will probably be most well-loved by those interested in Gothic fiction, literature by women, and those who are enamored by lengthy, patient, meticulously-detailed narratives. As a fan of all of those things, I recommend the novel and its introduction very highly.
I read this book because of the influence it had on Jane Austens writing of, "Northanger Abbey." Being an Austenophile, I was prepared for similarities between these books. Wrong. Ann Ward Radcliffe was a completely different classification of writer. This book would make a great movie, I give it that. However, the descriptive passages of scenery viewed by the travelers were repetitive, ridiculously rhapsodizing and tedious. How many ways can you describe rocks and trees? The main character, Emily, cries over just about anything, although some sadness is valid because of her father's death, Otherwise, the pages are sopping wet over good, bad, ugly and picturesque. Find your spine woman! Embroider a hanky, cease and desist from the incessant tears, near tears, tearing up, or just thinking about tears. As for Udolpho, there is no mystery....it's early gothic, nearly gruesome and most of the incidents are "what if" scenario speculations.

The weird part is, after writing all this is.....I missed the characters after I finished reading the book...so I gave it an extra star on that point alone. Something must have connected.
This book is a literary adventure! A must read for any classic enthusiast. Over the summer I stumbled upon Ann Radcliffe and The Mysteries of Udolpho by reading Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. Although Northanger Abbey is comical, it pays deference to Udolpho and sparked my curiosity. The main character of Northanger, Catherine spent the majority of the book reading Udolpho. I almost wished that I had read both books simultaneously.

Now as I am about to finish Udolpho (all 632 pages), I'm a bit sad because I will miss it. Radcliffe's language is rich, descriptive and beautiful. She is the artist of an incredibly layered mystery. As an American, I've read a great deal of traditional Gothic Literature, but never any Radcliffe. The descriptive passages transport the reader to another world. Udolpho sparked my imagination, much in the same way it sparked Catherine Moreland's in Northanger Abbey.

If you endeavor to read this book, as it is an investment, prepare to be contemplative. The book has a great deal of thrills and intrigue along with beautiful poetry and quotes from some of the greatest works and translations in the English Canon. I'm hoping someone will make this book into a masterpiece theater mini-series. It would be highly rated.