Reading Order
The Italian Reading Order
The Italian (1797) by Ann Radcliffe is her finest and most concentrated novel — the Gothic romance that Radcliffe wrote after Lewis's The Monk, in part as a response to Lewis's explicit sexuality and supernatural literalism. The Italian is organized around Ellena Rosalba (a beautiful and virtuous young woman of unknown parentage) and Vivaldi (a young nobleman who loves her but whose mother, the Marchesa di Vivaldi, is determined to prevent the marriage). The Marchesa enlists the monk Schedoni to separate them — first by arranging Ellena's abduction to a convent, then by commissioning Schedoni to murder her. Schedoni is one of the great villains of Gothic fiction: a monk of extraordinary intelligence and ambition who has buried a sinister past, and whose relationship to Ellena is complicated by the discovery (in the novel's central revelation) that he may be her father. The Italian is more economical and dramatically intense than The Mysteries of Udolpho; the Schedoni figure is Radcliffe's fullest investigation of the Gothic villain whose menace comes not from the supernatural but from the human capacity for cold, calculating evil.
Where to start
The Italian (1797) — the complete novel in the Oxford World's Classics edition (edited by Frederick Garber). Best Radcliffe reading order: The Mysteries of Udolpho → The Italian.
Complete The Italian Book List
- 1Buy
The Italian
Ann Radcliffe·1797·The complete novel — Ellena, Vivaldi, Schedoni, and the Marchesa di Vivaldi. Radcliffe's finest novel; the Oxford World's Classics edition with Frederick Garber's introduction is the standard scholarly edition - 2Buy
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Ann Radcliffe·1794·The companion predecessor — Emily St. Aubert and Montoni. The companion as the longer and more spacious version of the same investigation: where The Mysteries of Udolpho is four volumes and organized around Emily's slow survival through accumulated terrors, The Italian is more concentrated and organized around the dramatic confrontation between Ellena, Vivaldi, and Schedoni - 3Buy
The Monk
Matthew Lewis·1796·Lewis's companion — the monk Ambrosio's fall. The companion as the text Radcliffe was partly responding to: Lewis had taken the Gothic into explicit sexuality and literal supernatural, and The Italian is partly Radcliffe's demonstration that the most effective Gothic villain (Schedoni) does not need the supernatural to be terrifying - 4Buy
The Castle of Otranto
Horace Walpole·1764·The companion predecessor — the founding text. The companion as the origin: where Walpole established the conventions that Radcliffe fully realized, The Italian is Radcliffe's most complete and concentrated realization of those conventions - 5Buy
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë·1847·The companion Victorian heir — the female Gothic tradition. The companion as the fullest Victorian development of the tradition Radcliffe established: the Gothic villain (Schedoni/Rochester), the innocent heroine in the threatening great house, and the investigation of female vulnerability and survival all pass directly from Radcliffe into Brontë - 6Buy
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde·1890·Wilde's companion — the aestheticist Gothic villain. The companion as the heir of the Schedoni-type villain: Lord Henry Wotton's cold, calculating manipulation of Dorian Gray is organized around the same combination of intelligence, ambition, and moral coldness that makes Schedoni such a powerful figure - 7Buy
Rebecca
Daphne du Maurier·1938·Du Maurier's companion — the second Mrs. de Winter at Manderley. The companion as the twentieth-century female Gothic heir: Rebecca uses all the conventions Radcliffe established in The Italian and The Mysteries of Udolpho (the isolated great house, the threatened woman, the sinister authority figures, the secret from the past) but through the psychological novel's ambiguity - 8Buy
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley·1818·Shelley's companion — the creature and his creator. The companion as the philosophical heir: Mary Shelley uses the Gothic tradition that Radcliffe had developed — and engages explicitly with the Radcliffean versus Lewisian debate about the explained versus literal supernatural — to investigate questions of creation and responsibility that go beyond anything in the Gothic tradition itself
The Italian — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Italian by Ann Radcliffe about?
The Italian is about the love between Ellena Rosalba (a beautiful young woman of uncertain birth) and Vivaldi (a young nobleman), which is opposed by Vivaldi's mother the Marchesa di Vivaldi, who considers Ellena beneath her son's station. The Marchesa enlists the sinister monk Schedoni to separate them: first Ellena is abducted and confined in a convent; when she escapes and Vivaldi finds her, Schedoni is engaged to murder her. In the novel's central revelation, Schedoni discovers (through a miniature portrait she wears) that Ellena may be his own daughter — a revelation that prevents the murder and leads to the investigation of her parentage. Meanwhile, Vivaldi has been arrested by the Inquisition; the novel's second half is organized around his Inquisition scenes (the investigation of him for apparent heresy in pursuing Ellena into the convent) and the gradual revelation of Schedoni's sinister past.
Who is Schedoni in The Italian?
Schedoni is one of the great villains of Gothic fiction — a monk of extraordinary intelligence and ambition who has buried a sinister past (it gradually emerges that he murdered his wife and possibly his brother in order to secure an inheritance) and who serves the Marchesa di Vivaldi as her instrument for separating Ellena from Vivaldi. His combination of intellectual power, physical menace (he is tall, dark, and thin), moral coldness, and the suggestion of a hidden guilt that torments him while not restraining him makes him one of the most fully realized Gothic villains. Radcliffe wrote Schedoni partly as a response to the Lewis tradition of Gothic villainy (where the villain is explicitly demonic) — demonstrating that the most effective Gothic villain does not need the supernatural to be terrifying, because cold, calculating human intelligence is terrifying enough. Schedoni's influence on subsequent Gothic fiction (Brontë's Rochester, Bulwer-Lytton's Zanoni, Wilkie Collins's Count Fosco) was enormous.
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