Temporospatial Obscurity and Sublimity of Emotion in Raising Terror in Ann Radcliffe's the Mysteries of Udolpho

This paper aims to elaborate on and exemplify Ann Radcliffe’s masterful use of the suspension in time and indefinite time frame, as well as the indistinctness and haziness of space surrounding the main protagonists in The Mysteries of Udolpho, her most renowned novel. This obscurity of setting creates the intellectual incertitude in characters, and potentially readers, which further excites their emotions to the highest degree; a state the 18th century philosopher Edmund Burke calls sublime emotion. The obscure and the sublime are the two essential dimensions in fostering terror in Gothic literature of the 18th century, as well as today.