Ann Radcliffe’s Scientific Romance

The trope of the explained supernatural has vexed scholarly efforts to place Ann Radcliffe’s works squarely within an Enlightenment or Romantic regime. The trope’s appeal to naturalism in The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) invites comparisons between Radcliffe and contemporaries like Erasmus Darwin, Charlotte Smith, and other early practitioners of Romantic science. I argue that Radcliffe achieves a more radical vision of science than her contemporaries by rejecting utilitarian appropriations of natural phenomena. She instead presents science as a romantic pursuit of knowledge that rejects technical mastery and ends in aestheticized scenes of pastoral and domestic harmony. Finally, by interrupting the progress of Udolpho’s narrative, the explained supernatural creates textual clearings for Radcliffe’s readers to reproduce the scientific romances of her characters.