Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I meant to have seen where all these doors led, but was so busy dressing I had no time, so must leave it for my amusement to-morrow. Uncle says it's a very Radcliffian place. How like an angel that man did play!" chattered Amy, and lulled herself to sleep by humming the last air Casimer had given them.
The style, indeed, in the wide sense has never lost favour. But in the special Radcliffian form it reigned for some thirty years, and was widely popular for nearly fifty. Anne Radcliffe, whose maiden name was Ward, was born on 9th July 1764 and died on 7th February 1822.
The tale-telling of Beckford is like the singing of Burns, not uncoloured by the time, but still in the main purely individual; the purpose of the novels of Holcroft, Godwin, and Bage is groping in the dark; the Radcliffian romance and its exaggeration by Lewis exhibit the same uncertainty, the same application of the Rule of False.
In Webster no mere grisly inventor of Radcliffian horrors, as we are apt to think of the greatest of our dramatists after Shakespeare in the noble and tender nature of Webster the sense is one of ineffable sadness, unmarred by cynicism, but unbrightened by hope. The villains, even if successful till death overtake them, are mere hideous phantoms
We acknowledge that the English are the only nation under this romantic delusion; but so saying, we pronounce a very mixed censure upon our country. The plain truth is that Southern Europe has no romance in its household literature; has not an organ for comprehending what it is that we mean by Radcliffian romance. And the secondary romance of our later literature is to the south unintelligible.
Each of the Radcliffian horrors narrated in the last chapter, though vastly marvellous, most probably originated in some dreadful deed of blood, on which the vulgar and superstitious admiration of excitement of those days delighted to enlarge.
Word Of The Day