Terror, Literature, History: Michel Foucault and Ann Radcliffe

Abstract

The object of the present study is a particular literary reference that repeatedly appears in Michel Foucault’s work — a reference to the work of Ann Radcliffe. We present a close study of the passages where Foucault, in one way or another, deals with Ann Radcliffe’s novels (or novels that he believed to be written by Radcliffe), and attempt to show that Foucault’s interest in the “literature of terror” is not at all accidental. For Foucault, Gothic fiction is a literary “embodiment” of the historical tran sition from classicism to modernity.

Keywords

• michel foucault
• gothic fiction
• literary modernity
• french philosophy