![]() ![]() ![]() Aubert’s attempts to lift the infamous black veil and its translation from text to image: (the question is) which pictorial means were used to evoke the atmosphere of the situation and how could such a shift in perspective be executed?Īnn Radcliffe used techniques such as “delays, interruptions, and slumps in the narrative flow” (Schwarz, 2001, p 54) to build up the suspense and to (further) conceal the true cause of these phenomena which filled her characters with terror. Here, different artists struggled with the depiction of the episode of Emily St. In order to analyse those strategies of avoiding such spoilers in the enclosed images, this paper compares various illustrations of Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic novel ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ (1794) from a Visual Studies perspective. The illustrators, therefore, had to develop strategies in visual narration that, on the one hand, would generate interest in the story based on the seemingly supernatural episodes and, on the other, would not spoil the mystery. However, the most beloved form of the genre, the explained Gothic (Castle, 1987) - as brought to maturity by Ann Ward Radcliffe (1764–1823) with its narrative technique of repeated suspense - posed a specific problem for publishers and illustrators of such works: the Gothic novel’s attraction to a large extent stemmed from those exact figures and scenes of suspense which made them a predestined motif for a possible illustration as a selling point - while at the same time, both the characters in the diegesis and the readers were for most of the story unaware of the true nature of the phenomena and were to be kept in this state of suspense until the close of the narrative. Illustrations were deployed as special features to advertise book series, moreover, the names of well-known illustrators/artists proved to be an additional drawing point (Maidment, 2008, p 234 Houfe, 1998, p 315). Not only because of the technical developments in the field of the letterpress, but also due to an increasingly literate public and a growing competitive market that provided the audience with reading matter, frontispieces and illustrations which were now an aspect of marketing. At the time the Gothic novel grew popular, it also became common practice to furnish its publications with images.
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