St. Alban's Abbey, A Metrical Tale
| St. Alban's Abbey | |
|---|---|
| by Ann Radcliffe | |
 Title page of the 1826 collection of Ann Radcliffe's posthumous works | |
| Written | 1808-9 |
| Meter | iambic tetrameter |
| Rhyme scheme | variable; primarily couplets |
| Publication date | 1826 |
St. Alban's Abbey, A Metrical Tale is a poem by Ann Radcliffe, likely composed between 1808 and 1809, and first published posthumously in 1826.
In the frame story, the poem's narrator gazes on the ruins of St Albans Abbey and imagines how the building's occupants experienced the First Battle of St. Alban's in 1455. One of the poem's ten cantos describes the battle itself, while the others describe the anxious preparations at the abbey and the sad aftermath. The hero of the poem, a fictional Lancastrian named Baron Fitz-Harding, hides from Richard of York in the abbey and thus cannot be found by his wife or father, both of whom fear he has been killed; he also fears that his father has been killed, and they all search for each other among the wounded and dead. The poem ends with their bittersweet reunion and the capture of Henry VI.
Synopsis
[edit]The main narrative of the poem is set at the beginning of the Wars of the Roses, at the time of the 1455 First Battle of St. Alban's.[1] The poem is prefaced with an apostrophe invoking the "Spirit of ancient days" as a Muse.[2][3] Canto I, "The Abbey", describes the abbey's physical buildings in the eighteenth century as a mix of historical and modern features and invites the reader to imagine how it was used in the distant past, emphasizing the abbey's role as an intellectual and social hub of its community.[4]
The narrative begins in Canto II, "The Night Before the First Battle", in which monks and knights nervously anticipate the next day. The poem's hero is a fictional Lancastrian, Baron Fitz-Harding.[5] In addition to military scenes, the poem describes how the monks at the Abbey care for the wounded, and follows Fitz-Harding's wife Lady Florence on a dangerous journey in disguise to find her husband.[5] Canto III is "The Day of the First Battle"; Canto IV, "The Hour After the Battle"; Cantos V and VI are "The Evening After the Battle", set outside the castle's walls and within the town and abbey, respectively.
In Canto VII, "Scene in the Monastery", Fitz-Harding secretly takes shelter in the abbey buildings at night while Richard of York seeks him. He travels through the abbey's buildings disguised as a monk in Canto VIII, "Solemn Watch Within the Abbey", seeking his father among the wounded and dead, without success. In Canto IX, "Among the Dead", Fitz-Harding watches other mourners arrive with the dawn, including his wife Lady Florence looking for him in her own disguise. They reunite in Canto X, also titled "Among the Dead", and find Fitz-Harding's father alive. The narrative ends with Richard's capture of Henry VI, and the poem concludes with the narrator's farewell to the "Norman shade" (i.e., ghost) which had temporarily animated the abbey buildings with the story of its past.
Style
[edit]St. Alban's Abbey is Radcliffe's longest narrative poem.[6] Its stanzas, which vary in length, are grouped into ten cantos.[7] The narrative pacing is influenced by Walter Scott's new and popular historical fiction; as in his writing, St. Alban's Abbey moves frequently between scenes of simultaneous events that make up multiple interconnected storylines.[8] After the poem, Radcliffe included 61 pages of endnotes that contextualize its fiction through an antiquarian historical lens.[8]
Composition and publication
[edit]According to Radcliffe's biographer Rictor Norton, St. Alban's Abbey was most likely composed in 1808 to 1809.[8] The poem's setting was inspired by Radcliffe's sightseeing trips with her husband in the south of England, especially her exploration of the cathedral for which the poem is named.[9] For example, a helmet she saw there appears in the poem as the "golden damasked helmet" belonging to the hero's father.[10]
Like everything Radcliffe wrote after her enormously successful final novel The Italian (1797), St. Alban's Abbey was not published until after her death.[11] She died in 1823, and the poem formed part of a four-volume collection of posthumous works published in 1826.[12] This collection is described on its title page as: Gaston de Blondeville, or The Court of Henry III. Keeping Festival in Ardenne, A Romance. St. Alban's Abbey, A Metrical Tale; With Some Poetical Pieces. By Anne Radcliffe, Author of "The Mysteries of Udolpho," "Romance of the Forest," &c. To Which is Prefixed a Memoir of the Author, With Extracts from Her Journals.[13] The poem was split across volumes three and four of the set.[13][14] The internal title page for the poem itself gives it the subtitle A Political Romance, rather than A Metrical Tale.[15]
Analysis
[edit]
Castle ruins
[edit]The historical preservation of castle ruins was a subject of debate in the late eighteenth century, especially expressed in concerns about modern "improvements" of ancient buildings.[3]
Gothic literature sometimes depicted castle ruins solely as aesthetically beautiful objects, unrelated to a history of violence.[16] In contrast, Radcliffe's poem depicts St. Alban's Abbey as a ruined monastery joined to a thriving cathedral.[16]
Gothic, Romantic, and antiquarian depictions of history
[edit]The aesthetics of the poem diverge from most of Radcliffe's previous writing.[17] Radcliffe's early prose writing used historical settings, especially castles, as part of a suspenseful, sensationalist writing style known as the Gothic. Other novelists of the "Radcliffe school" in the 1790s frequently used similar settings, and added supernatural plot elements or violence to intensify the suspense and sensationalism. Meanwhile, poetic writing of the Romantic school depicted historical castles, especially ruined ones, to convey picturesque or a sublime encounter with the past. As the eighteenth century turned to the nineteenth, this Romantic aesthetic increasingly displaced the Gothic.[17] An antiquarian approach to the past, influenced by Thomas Warton, also began to gain prominence.[18]
In this context, St. Alban's Abbey reflects a change of course in Radcliffe's career.[17] She uses poetry rather than prose fiction, and presents her archetypically Gothic setting in both a Romantic and an antiquarian light.[19] Antiquarian elements include precise, technical descriptions of the castle architecture,[20] and objects for which Radcliffe had seen real historical exemplars.[10] The poem presents an unresolved tension between nostalgically longing for a lost heroic past, and ironically accepting that returning to the past is impossible.[5]
Relationship to Walter Scott
[edit]Two poems published by Scott before Radcliffe wrote St. Alban's Abbey, namely The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and Marmion (1808), feature similarly central castles.[8]
At the time, historical fiction (especially that of Walter Scott) often presented history as a linear narrative of progress, with war as a natural part of that progress.[8]
Reception
[edit]An anonymous review in The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal (which may have been written by Thomas Noon Talfourd, who was heavily involved in the publication) praised the entire collection of Radcliffe's posthumous works, primarily focusing on Gaston de Blondeville.[21] This review compares St. Alban's Abbey favourably to the poetry of Walter Scott.[21]
The poem is often neglected in scholarship on Radcliffe.[22] The literary critic Ruth Facer says, in her biography of Radcliffe, that the poem "does her no justice; it is long, rambling and tedious. The rhyme scheme is extremely variable and verses ... bear little relation to her rich prose style."[23]
References
[edit]Citations
[edit]- ^ Bobbitt 2020, p. 179.
- ^ Radcliffe 1826a, p. 91.
- ^ a b McAuley 2007, p. 125.
- ^ McAuley 2007, p. 125, 129.
- ^ a b c Bobbitt 2020, p. 188.
- ^ Bobbitt 2020, p. 175.
- ^ Bobbitt 2020, pp. 188–9.
- ^ a b c d e Bobbitt 2020, p. 189.
- ^ Bobbitt 2020, pp. 180–1.
- ^ a b Bobbitt 2020, p. 181.
- ^ Bobbitt 2020, pp. 175–6.
- ^ Miles 2005.
- ^ a b Radcliffe 1826a.
- ^ Radcliffe 1826b.
- ^ Radcliffe 1826a, p. 89.
- ^ a b Bobbitt 2020, p. 191.
- ^ a b c McAuley 2007, p. 118-9.
- ^ McAuley 2007, p. 118-9, 125.
- ^ McAuley 2007, p. 118-9, 124-5.
- ^ McAuley 2007, p. 126.
- ^ a b Townshend & Wright 2014, p. 27-8.
- ^ McAuley 2007, p. 3.
- ^ Facer.
Works cited
[edit]- Bobbitt, Elizabeth (2020). "Negotiating Gothic Nationalisms in Ann Radcliffe's Post-1797 Texts: Gaston de Blondeville (1826) and St. Alban's Abbey (1808)". In Hudson, Kathleen (ed.). Women's Authorship and the Early Gothic: Legacies and Innovations. University of Wales Press. pp. 175–196. ISBN 9781786836113.
- Facer, Ruth. "Ann Radcliffe". Chawton House Library. Retrieved 2025-03-20.
- McAuley, Jenny (2007). Representations of gothic abbey architecture in the works of four romantic-period authors: Radcliffe, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron (PDF) (Ph.D. thesis). University of Durham.
- Miles, Robert (2005). "Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/22974. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- Radcliffe, Ann Ward (1826a). Gaston de Blondeville, or The court of Henry III. keeping festival in Ardenne, a romance, St. Alban's abbey, a metrical tale; with some poetical pieces. Vol. 3.
- Radcliffe, Ann Ward (1826b). Gaston de Blondeville, or The court of Henry III. keeping festival in Ardenne, a romance, St. Alban's abbey, a metrical tale; with some poetical pieces. Vol. 4.
- Townshend, Dale; Wright, Angela (2014). "Gothic and Romantic engagements: The critical reception of Ann Radcliffe, 1789– 1850". Ann Radcliffe, Romanticism and the Gothic. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107032835.