Nos situamos en Nápoles en 1758, un joven de buena familia, Vicente Vivaldi, se enamora perdidamente de una jovencita, Elena Rosalba, procedente de familia algo ilustre en el pasado pero venida a menos. Elena también lo ama, pero es consciente de que la familia de él no la va a aceptar y no se equivoca. Los marqueses no quieren que su hijo se case con ella, considerándolo una ofensa a su apellido y familia. Vivaldi se mantiene firme y su madre se niega rotundamente a que esta jovenzuela atrape a su hijo. Su confesor, un monje ambicioso y altivo que podría tener lengua viperina, se alía con ella y la ayuda a realizar sus malas artes para así evitar este casamiento tan inconveniente. Elena será raptada y encerrada en un monasterio en manos de una cruel abadesa. Vivaldi no descansará hasta recuperar a su amada. A lo largo de la historia también conoceremos el contenido de una confesión, y al autor de la misma, que se hizo en el pasado en el confesionario de los Penitentes Negros y que dejó altamente turbado al sacerdote que la escuchó debido a su malignidad. Elementos sobrenaturales. Demasiados. Además, la autora a través de los sentimientos de los protagonistas plasma el paisaje. Cuando Ellena sufre, el mundo se torna gris ceniciento, tormentoso, con el mar embravecido…

En aquel documento narra los amores de Ellena Di Rosalba y el hijo del marqués Di Vivaldi, Vicentio. Ella, no es pobre pero tampoco de noble familia, huérfana de padres además. Él, noble, joven, cae rendido nada más ver a Ellena, cubierta levemente con un velo, en los oficios matutinos de la iglesia de San Lorenzo de Nápoles. Pero su unión no es vista con buenos ojos por los padres de él, y ella su orgullo le impide colarse en una familia que no la quiere. Ambos sufren penurias juntos y separados por la familia de Vicentio y acaban descubriendo ciertas verdades sobre el pasado de sus parientes. Emily St. Aubert is the only child of a landed rural family whose fortunes are in decline. Emily and her father share a notably close bond in a shared appreciation for nature. They grow still closer after her mother's death from illness. She accompanies him on a journey from their native Gascony, through the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean coast of Roussillon, over many mountainous landscapes. During the journey, they encounter Valancourt, a handsome man who also feels an almost mystical kinship with the natural world. Emily and Valancourt fall in love.At some point, I’d like to talk about these three in comparison, as well as the consider The Italian alongside more contemporary writing, but I thought it would make sense to start out with a brief review. There are few scholarly texts commenting on the direct influence of William Shakespeare on the stories and rhetoric of Radcliffe. It would only take a casual reader of both writers, however, to spot the similarities between The Italian and many of Shakespeare’s works: “When one author not only makes allusions to the work of another, but also frequently directly quotes him, the case for influence can be firmly established. That Ann Radcliffe had a thorough knowledge of Shakespeare can be deduced from her use of his quotations as chapter headings to foretell succinctly the action of her novels. Even in the texts of the novels, phrases from Shakespeare appear, and these are not always the well-known phrases”. [35] The plays were also acted quite frequently in Radcliffe’s day, so it is probable that “Radcliffe had seen Shakespeare’s dramas performed”. [35] Radcliffe also referenced the plays of Shakespeare, including Hamlet and The Tempest, in her personal journal. [35] The “sameness” of her plots, a major criticism of Radcliffe, can also be attributed to her following the Romantic comedy model of Shakespeare. [35]

The plot starts in Naples, Italy in the 18th century, in the church of Santa Maria del Pianto, where an English traveller is speaking with an Italian friar. The Englishman notices a man of extraordinary appearance in a shadowy area of the church, who is an assassin, according to the friar. When the Englishman asks why this assassin is protected in the church, an Italian friend travelling with him directs his attention to a famous confessional in the church, which was the scene of a particularly startling confession. He offers to send him a narrative relating this former assassin's confession, and the problems that attended it, to his hotel, and the two retire from the church and go their separate ways. The Englishman reads the story in his hotel room as follows: The animalistic imagery used to describe Schedoni is also taken verbatim from the works of Shakespeare. He is described as a “serpent” mirroring language from Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet; he is described as a “tiger” mirroring language from Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Richard III; a “vulture” mirroring the language of King Lear, Macbeth, and Titus Andronicus; a “basilisk” mirroring language in Richard III, The Winter’s Tale, and Cymbeline. [35] [42] [43] [44] [45] Editions [ edit ] Lo único “malo” que podría decir de la obra es que tal vez se hace un poco pesada a veces, sobre todo cuando llegas al final. Cuando ya quieres saberlo todo, la autora va a su ritmo y a mí, reconozco, me ha exasperado un poco. Nada que no se pueda arreglar con un poco de paciencia por mi parte, vaya. The Mysteries of Udolpho is a quintessential Gothic romance, replete with incidents of physical and psychological terror: remote crumbling castles, seemingly supernatural events, a brooding, scheming villain and a persecuted heroine.I have read all Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and most of them with great pleasure. The Mysteries of Udolpho, when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again;—I remember finishing it in two days—my hair standing on end the whole time." [29] The book wasn’t a wash, however. As I said, the early portrait of Schedoni is very powerful, and he is a charismatic presence from beginning to the end. The second half of the novel, which takes the story into the dungeons of the Inquisition, offers a penetrating and surprisingly circumspect look at the institution, as well as its ties with the aristocracy and the larger church.

Sadly, even Radcliffe’s four masterworks— A Sicilian Romance, The Romance of the Forest, The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian—are not well-known today. Readers generally discover them, as I did, after being enamored by alternative examples of Gothic literature, or from Jane Austen, who alludes to Radcliffe incessantly. In [ The Italian], her last critically acclaimed novel, she leaned heavily on the plots of Shakespeare.” [35] The plot follows the three stages of the romantic comedy model and parallels many of Shakespeare’s plays including “the thwarted love” present in Romeo and Juliet, the villa scene where Vivaldi overhears Ellena nearly a facsimile of the balcony scene; [36] Olivia’s reappearance after years of faking her death mirroring the character Hermione, and Olivia’s daughter Ellena being brought up in a lower class than her birth mirroring the Hermione’s daughter Perdita in The Winter's Tale; [37] the play within the play wherein Schedoni sees his own actions depicted just as Claudius does in Hamlet, as well as Schedoni murdering his brother and marrying his wife just as Claudius; [38] the “aura of superstition and fear” that Schedoni and Spalatro experience while preparing to kill Ellena “is almost taken verbatim from Macbeth”, as Spalatro sees the ghost of the man he killed, just as Macbeth sees Banquo, and both men experience the delusional states of paranoia both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth experience during and after Duncan’s murder; [39] Schedoni mimics Iago from Othello as he psychologically manipulates other characters, and his manipulations are the catalyst for the major conflicts in the plot. [35] [40] La novela tiene las características típicas de la novela gótica; atmósfera de misterio, ruinas (o lugares muy lóbregos tipo catacumbas), elementos sobrenaturales, personajes atormentados por la culpa o con principios morales casi nulos, protagonista atípica… The Critical response to Ann Radcliffe. Deborah D. Rogers. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. 1994. ISBN 0-313-28031-2. OCLC 28586837. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: others ( link)The ending of the novel is a happy one; Vivaldi and Paulo are released from prison, Ellena is reunited with her mother, and Vivaldi and Ellena are joined in marriage, and all the villains have died. The Marchesa dies shortly before finding out that her son has been freed from prison. Father Schedoni, condemned to die, poisons himself and Nicola di Zampari, and calls a tribunal including the Marchese and Vivaldi to witness their final confessions at his deathbed. It may be worthy of observation, that the virtues of Olivia, exerted in general cause, had thus led her unconsciously to the happiness of saving her daughter; while the vices of Schedoni had as unconsciously urged him nearly to destroy his niece, and had always been preventing, by the means they prompted him to employ, the success of his constant aim." Marchioness de Villeroi is a mysterious figure whose miniature Emily finds in a secret panel in her father's closet. She was married to Marquis de Villeroi, but becomes estranged from him and dies through the intervention of Laurentini di Udolpho. She was a sister to M. St. Aubert, and thereby Emily's aunt.

Por último voy a pasar al estilo y todas esas cosas por las que algunas personas dejan de leer libros que merecen la pena como este. El estilo es florido, con muchos adjetivos y adverbios y frases largas. Le da bastantes vueltas a lo que quiere expresar. ¿Es conciso? Sí y no, porque a pesar de que le da bastantes vueltas a lo mismo siempre te va soltando información hasta que compones un collage con todo. El ritmo de lectura es desigual, hay partes que se pueden hacer pesadas, y otras no tanto. Hay algo de acción pero es casi nula. Por supuesto, tiene una calidad literaria indiscutible. Donde más destaca Radcliffe es como va tejiendo lentamente los sentimientos de los personajes, sentimientos complicados de expresar, ella consigue con maestría hacerlo. Y bueno, lo que es la novela gótica de la primera ola se lo debemos casi todo a ella. Si eso no es calidad literaria, no sé qué puede ser. a b Norton, Rictor (1999). Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. London: Leicester University Press. pp.26–33. a b c d McIntyre, Clara Frances (1920). Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time. Yale University Press. So yes, there are slower moments, as there are in her other masterpieces, and unfortunately those slower moments make up the entire climatic part of the story. But they are not so bad as to prevent the novel from being an enthralling tale of romance and horror. Of all her novels, The Italian would probably make the best film. It’s amazing to know this was written long before motion pictures because so much of the atmosphere and action is written in ways that I can only describe as cinematic. In 1875, Paul Féval wrote a story starring Radcliffe as a vampire hunter, titled La Ville Vampire: Adventure Incroyable de Madame Anne Radcliffe ("City of Vampires: The Incredible Adventure of Mrs. Anne Radcliffe"), which blends fiction and history. [36] At the last minute a mysterious man on a white horse saves the day, none other than Lord Wellington fresh from the Battle of Waterloo.Wallace, Diana (2013). Female Gothic Histories: Gender, History and the Gothic. University of Wales Press. p.106. Radcliffe, Ann Ward (1795). A journey made in the summer of 1794, through Holland and the western frontier of Germany, with a return down the Rhine; to which are added, observations during a tour to the lakes of Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland. Robarts – University of Toronto. London: G.G. and J. Robinson. Miles, Robert. Ann Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress. United Kingdom, Manchester University Press, 1995.