Surveying Ann Radcliffe's Gothic Landscapes

This article examines the use of space in Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic romances, considering how issues of female propriety, property and identity are explored through contradictions within her landscapes. In so doing, it analyses the connections between being and place, studying Radcliffe’s representations of the sublime and the picturesque in relationship to the ‘female Gothic’.1 It contends that Radcliffe brings together the opposing forces of cartography and poetry in her panoramic surveys of space. In conclusion, it introduces the critical concept of ‘Gothic cartography’ in order to define these conflicting approaches within Radcliffe’s literary geographies