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Durham E-Theses Representations of gothic abbey architecture in the works of four romantic-period authors: Radclie, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron McAuley, Jenny How to cite: McAuley, Jenny (2007) Representations of gothic abbey architecture in the works of four romantic-period authors: Radclie, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2564/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Jenny McAuley Representations of Gothic Abbey Architecture in the Works of Four Romantic Period Authors: Radcliffe, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron PhD University of Durham Department of English Studies 2007 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author or the university to which it was submitted. No quotation from it, or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author or university, and any information derived from it should be acknowledged. 1 1 JUN 2007 .Jenny McAuley Representations of Gothic Abbey Architecture in the Works of Four Romantic Period Authors: Radcliffe, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron Abstract This study argues the importance of the Gothic abbey to Romantic-period constructions of creative imagination and identity. I examine four Romantic-period authors with reference to particular abbey sites with which they engaged, placing their works in dialogue with contemporary topographical and antiquarian literature, aesthetic theory, and cultural trends. I consider these authors' representations of Gothic abbeys specifically in the terms of eighteenth-century picturesque landscape aesthetics, according to which the abbey was associated with contemplation. My study thus provides an alternative to readings of architectural descriptions in Romantic period literature that have conflated abbey architecture with castle architecture (regarded as representing states of repression and confinement). Relating Ann Radcliffe to St Alban's Abbey, William Wordsworth to Furness Abbey, Sir Walter Scott to Melrose Abbey and George Gordon, Lord Byron to Newstead Abbey, I show how these authors each used their informed awareness, and aesthetic appreciation, of Gothic abbey architecture both to assert their personal senses of artistic identity and purpose, and to promote their work within a Gothic Revival-epoch literary market. In this consideration of individual authors and their experiences and representations of specific Gothic abbey sites, my study demonstrates the usefulness of sustained engagement with the eighteenth-century Gothic Revival context to an appreciation of those many literary works of the Romantic period that feature Gothic architectural settings. It is also hoped that it may indicate possible, new directions for critical investigation into the relationships between "Gothic" and "Romantic" literature, and between the literary and the architectural Gothic. CONTENTS Acknowledgements . 11 Declarations . 111 Introduction . 1 I. Gothic Abbey Architecture, the Eighteenth-Century Picturesque, and Constructions of Creative Identity . 37 II. Melancholy Pleasure: Radcliffe, St Alban's Abbey, and the Inspirational Gothic Interior . .. 92 III. A Structure Famed: Wordsworth, Furness Abbey, and the Architectural Gothic as Picturesque.............................................. 138 IV. Exhibiting the Ruins: Scott, Melrose Abbey, and the Antiquary as Artist......................................................................... 179 V. Licentious Profusion: Byron, Newstead Abbey, and the Architectural Gothic as "Arabesque"................................................. 223 Conclusion . 269 Works Cited . 27 5 II Acknowledgements I am most of all indebted to my supervisors, Professor Pamela Clemit and Dr Robin Dix, not only for their expert guidance of my research toward, and writing of, this thesis, but also for their kindness, support, and patience, and for the great generosity with which they have given of their time and energies. The Department of English Studies has provided me with a most welcoming and stimulating environment within which to pursue these studies and to exchange my ideas with others. Thanks are due especially to Professor Michael O'Neill for his care, and excellent judgement, in arranging supervision for me, as well as to Professor Fiona Robertson, who supervised my first two terms of study at Durham, to my very great benefit. I am also most grateful to Dr Alison Shell for her kind assistance, and her energetic and involved interest in my studies both before and during my time at Durham, and to Dr Gillian Skinner, my college tutor at St Chad's, who has also been most sympathetic in her interest. For their invaluable practical support, I am very much obliged to the excellent administrative staff at the Department of English Studies. The challenges of completing what have ultimately been entirely self-funded studies would have been still more arduous without the good company and loyal support of many friends and colleagues both in and beyond Durham. Among these have been Ian Campbell, Nancy Cho, Elizabeth Evershed, Katie Halsey, Luke Houghton, Michael Huxtable, Hannah Matis, Anita O'Connor, Andrew Rudd, Virginia Sampson, and Jane Slinn, with Luke Houghton also providing valuable assistance in proof reading part of this work. For their unfailing affection, encouragement, and (again) patience, I thank my family, and most especially my parents. Ill Declarations No part of this thesis has previously been submitted for a degree in this or any other university, though some similar references to Thomas Chatterton were made in my Cambridge M.Phil (2001) and Oxford M.St (2002) dissertations on other topics. Jenny McAuley. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published in any form, including electronic and the internet, without the author's prior written consent. All information derived from this thesis must be acknowledged appropriate! y. Introduction Since Kenneth Clark so categorically stated that "more than any other movement in the plastic arts the [Gothic] Revival was a literary movement," the eighteenth-century enthusiasm for Gothic architecture has been assured of its place in any history of British art or literature of the Romantic period. 1 Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, and the first decade of the twenty-first, literary critics, as well as art and cultural historians, have duly taken account of the architectural trends that paralleled such literary developments as the changes in meaning of the word "Gothic"; the vogue for "graveyard" poetry; literary primitivism; the emergence of the "Gothic" novel, and eighteenth-century preoccupations with a "return to nature."2 Few such accounts have ever provided, or been intended to provide, more than potted histories of particular shifts in semantics or in perspectives on taste, their aims being to sketch in background contexts for the main works or ideas at issue. While all have tended to agree upon the existence of some essential link between the Gothic Revival in architecture and the character of British literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this is an area of enquiry that has remained comparatively under- explored, the importance of the eighteenth-century "wave" of the Gothic Revival to literary Romanticism having rarely attracted as much attention as the engagements 1 Kenneth Clark, The Gothic Revival: An Essay in the History ofTaste (1928; London: Murray, 1962) 9. 2 Frequently quoted and alluded-to examples of these include, as well as Clark, Arthur 0. Lovejoy, "The First Gothic Revival and the Return to Nature," Modem Language Notes 47 (1932): 419-46; Paul Frankl, The Gothic (Princt::ton: Pri(lceton W,J 960). The ·~analysis of earlier attitudes towards,Gothic," as·;,~ust~~ary prelude to histories of the 19th-century Gothic Revival," usually beginning with semantic considerations, is meanwhile also identified by Alexandrina Buchanan in "Interpretations of Medieval Architecture, c.1550-c.1750," Gothic Architecture and its Meanings 1550-1830 (Reading: Spire, 2002), ed. Michael Hall, 27-50; 27. 2 with Gothic architecture of such nineteenth-century authors as John Ruskin, Marcel Proust and Henry James. 3 In this study, I shall be attempting to redress this situation by argumg for the significance of representations of Gothic abbey architecture in Romantic-period British literature to constructions of literary identity. My broader intention in doing so is to demonstrate the usefulness of a sustained engagement with the eighteenth- century Gothic Revival context to appreciation of those many literary works of the Romantic period that feature Gothic architectural settings. Critical readings of these have paid insufficient attention to the particular ways in which their authors most immediately experienced