The Italian
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Published in 1797, Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian; or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents is a Gothic romance of forbidden love, religious authority and concealed identities. Set in eighteenth-century Italy, the novel follows the young nobleman Vincentio di Vivaldi as he falls in love with Ellena Rosalba, a woman whose uncertain social position makes her an unwelcome choice for his aristocratic family. Their hopes are threatened by Vivaldi’s formidable mother and the sinister monk Schedoni, whose influence draws the lovers into a world of abduction, imprisonment and the terrifying machinery of the Inquisition.
Radcliffe combines the atmospheric landscapes and delayed revelations associated with her earlier fiction with a more concentrated exploration of ambition, conscience and institutional power. Schedoni, a figure of concealed guilt and unsettling moral complexity, is among her most memorable creations, while Ellena’s composure and intelligence complicate the familiar Gothic image of the endangered heroine. The novel stands near the culmination of Radcliffe’s celebrated Gothic career, demonstrating how suspense and romantic melodrama can also expose the abuses of authority and the constraints imposed on women.
From the book
About the year 1764, some English travellers in Italy, during one of their excursions in the environs of Naples, happened to stop before the portico of the Santa Maria del Pianto.
— Ann Radcliffe, The Italian
On The Italian
The Italian, though less magical than The Mysteries of Udolpho, is a technical tour de force.
— Rictor Norton, Gothic Readings