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On Verona Book pp.45-52 Ruskin, presumably in the context of his thinking about Transition at Verona Book p.43, begins notes for an essay on novelty and romance. Unfortunately the manuscript is more than usually difficult to read, to the point that the direction of the argument is not easy to discern. The passage at Verona Book pp.53-57 on architectural change presents problems which are at least as great. Work on the transcription of both is therefore still in progress. It should be noted that where there are square brackets enclosing a question mark it cannot be assumed that only one word is represented.
With the passage compare Works, 5.369 [n/a] where ‘the charm of romantic association can be felt only by the modern European child. It rises eminently out of the contrast of the beautiful past with the frightful and monotonous present; and it depends for its force on the existence of ruins and traditions, on the remains of architecture, the traces of battlefields, and the precursorship of eventful history.’
Ruskin sets out views on the relationship between Romance and Imagination at Works, 10.7 - where ‘the impotent feelings of Romance, so singularly characteristic of this century, may indeed gild, but never save, the remains of these mightier ages’;
Works, 11.224 where ‘the essence of modern romance is simply the return of the heart and fancy to the things in which they naturally take pleasure’;
Works, 12.55 - ‘the feelings of romance endure within us, they are unerring, -- they are as true to what is right and lovely as the needle to the north’.
There seem to be some significant differences between his analysis in Verona Book and his analyses in his published work. It seems that ‘Romance’ here is negative defined in terms of the false charm produced by novelty. The problem here is that the writing is difficult to decipher, not least because the direction of the argument is equally unclear; therefore transcription is given here of the first part only.
At Verona Book p.49 Ruskin refers to Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), who was the author of Mysteries of Udolpho, and other ‘Gothic Novels’ , remarkable for their descriptions of landscape and for their bizarre settings, and imagined horrors.
Radcliffe is mentioned in the published works of Ruskin at Works, 5.359f [n/a], Works, 5.372 [n/a]; Works, 12.120.
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]