Epiphanic Reading in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho

Abstract

Epiphany, in The Mysteries of Udolpho, is seeing what one ought not to see, what one in fact does not or cannot see, or what is not really there. What is seen but does not belong to the visible order of things is of a ghostly, spiritual or phantomesque nature. Furthermore, such epiphany is especially lined to seeing what one should not read, to reading what one should not see.