Dreams and the Inner Voice in The Romance of the Forest
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Radcliffe is often known to rationalize the supernatural elements in her novels with her signature technique of explained supernatural and her heroines are marked with their refined sensibility and reason that establishes them as superior characters. This paper, however, focuses on the existence of the heroine’s vivid and ghastly dream scenes in Radcliffe’s earlier work The Romance of the Forest (1791). No other rational heroines in her later works experience such lurid dream visions and thus the significance of the supernatural dream sequences in The Romance of the Forest justifies further exploration. This paper attempts to provide a historically nuanced interpretation of the heroine’s dreams by returning to the eighteenth century’s growing interest in the power of imagination. Contrary to the general belief that the eighteenth century leaned towards the scientific and rational, there was another stream that pursued more spiritual values. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a leading figure who contributed to the heightened interest in feeling and spirituality. Read in this context, the heroine’s dreams in The Romance of the Forest can be understood as articulations of the Rousseauian “inner voice.” Rousseau explains that within each individual resides an “inner voice” of nature. Attuned to nature and its Creator, this voice guides the individual to become an ethical subject. Through the character of Adeline who discovers her true identity through the inner voice of her dreams as well as through her communion with nature, Radcliffe presents us with a new model of the experience of a deeply interiorized modern subjectivity. As a proponent of the power of imagination, like Rousseau, she also took part in the Romantic move away from an absolute faith in empirical reason.
Abstract
Radcliffe is often known to rationalize the supernatural elements in her novels with her signature technique of explained supernatural and her heroines are marked with their refined sensibility and reason that establishes them as superior characters. This paper, however, focuses on the existence of the heroine’s vivid and ghastly dream scenes in Radcliffe’s earlier work The Romance of the Forest (1791). No other rational heroines in her later works experience such lurid dream visions and thus the significance of the supernatural dream sequences in The Romance of the Forest justifies further exploration. This paper attempts to provide a historically nuanced interpretation of the heroine’s dreams by returning to the eighteenth century’s growing interest in the power of imagination. Contrary to the general belief that the eighteenth century leaned towards the scientific and rational, there was another stream that pursued more spiritual values. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a leading figure who contributed to the heightened interest in feeling and spirituality. Read in this context, the heroine’s dreams in The Romance of the Forest can be understood as articulations of the Rousseauian “inner voice.” Rousseau explains that within each individual resides an “inner voice” of nature. Attuned to nature and its Creator, this voice guides the individual to become an ethical subject. Through the character of Adeline who discovers her true identity through the inner voice of her dreams as well as through her communion with nature, Radcliffe presents us with a new model of the experience of a deeply interiorized modern subjectivity. As a proponent of the power of imagination, like Rousseau, she also took part in the Romantic move away from an absolute faith in empirical reason.
참고문헌 (16)
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