A Sicilian Romance Analysis

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Radcliffe achieves a dazzling success in Europe. In 1970s, she was the best - selling English novelist. Her gothic novels are widely read, imitated and translated.14 Thomas De Quincey, a critic, called her “ the great enchantress” 15 for her power of enchantment and romantic sensibility in describing her characters and landscapes . Although Horace Walpole was regarded , for at least two centuries in the British culture, as ‘inventor’ of the Gothic literary mode in The Castle of Otranto in late (1764), it is Radcliffe who was considered as the perfector of the form by the late 18th- and early 19th-century critics and literary historians.16 Radcliffe was regarded as the founder of the school of terror in gothic literature , in her unfinished …show more content…

A Sicilian Romance
A Sicilian Romance is a classical gothic novel set at the end of the sixteenth century. Its events take place in an ancient castle on the northern shore of Sicily. The castle was in the possession of the fifth marquis of Mazzini , an impetuous , tyrannical figure , who left the castle with his son after the [death] of his wife (Louisa) to live in Naples with his new young and beautiful wife Maria de Vellorno . He left his little daughters (Julia and Emilia) in the castle to be raised up by their mother’s sincere friend Madame de Menon.23 Many years passed, the Mazzini sisters grow as talented, beautiful ladies. The Marquis return to the castle with his new wife and his son Ferdinand. The new wife Maria de Vellorno was impressed by the Mazzini sisters’ apartment and ordered them to move to another apartment closely near the southern portion of the castle. Julia and her sister feel restless in their new apartment for they heard strange sounds and observed mysterious lights came from the southern apartments. In the meantime, the castle is said to be haunted by supernatural spirits. Julia and her sister are extremely frightened by these sounds, and decided to inform their father about them. However, the marquis declines their claim and attributes these sounds for their wild imagination. By this time, Julia, the younger sister and the novel’s protagonist, falls in love with a young and handsome Italian nobleman Hippolitus de Vereza. Though their love is mutual , Hippolitus doesn’t has the courage to ask for her hand for his inferior position.