Otranto is now claimed, not as a found manuscript, but as a generic experiment in which the author self-consciously set out to “blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern.” 5 The literary implications of this attempt are not only personal and self-promotional, but explicitly national as well: in writing his new form of romance Walpole sought to imitate the “mixed” style of Shakespeare rather than a classical model, and to defend the English bard - “our immortal countryman” - against the vilifications of his French detractor, Voltaire. A new set of concerns is articulated in his preface to the second edition (1765), concerns that have more to do with eighteenth-century England than sixteenth-century Italy. In the wake of the remarkable success of Otranto, however, Walpole admits to having written the book and undertakes to explain his reasons for doing so. Walpole, writing under a pseudonym, claims in the preface to the first edition that the text of Otranto was “found in the library of an ancient catholic family in the north of England” and “printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529.” 3 He offers his “translation” of this manuscript to the English reader - just as Radcliffe offers The Italian - as an entertaining artifact of another age and country, a window on a world displaced by time and distance: “I have no doubt but the English reader will be pleased with a sight of this performance.” 4

Similar promises and textual conceits may be found in many Gothic novels, including that work most often cited as the first Gothic, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764). The otherwise unmotivated preamble on the ways of the Italians suggests that the text in its entirety should be taken as emblematic of Italianness, Catholicism, a mysterious and un-English way of life. Though the assassin in the church does not figure in what follows, this lack of direct plot connection between prologue and tale confirms rather than negates the promise that the novel will exhibit and explain alien behavior. The Italian who has explained the mores of his strange country proceeds to give the English traveler a manuscript - one that, in good Gothic fashion, turns out to be The Italian itself. On expressing his astonishment that he should find shelter there, he is told that such adventures are common in Italy. An English- man on his travels, walking through a church, sees a dark figure stealing along the aisles. Nothing can be finer than the opening of this story. Anna Letitia Barbauld, in her introduction to Radcliffe’s novels in The British Novelists (1810), writes of this frame: The novel’s very title makes this promise, as does the much-admired frame tale that precedes the narrative proper. The place of nationality in Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian (1797) appears obvious: the text promises to reveal the secrets of an alien national identity to English readers.

The italian by ann radcliffe