The Grand Tour

In the Introduction to The Romance of the Forest, Chloe Card mentions the "socially and privileged practice of travel on the Grand Tour" (xx). After a bit of research, I learned that the Grand Tour was common for members of aristocratic families and royalty in Northern Europe and England in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. On the Grand Tour, travelers hoped to gain a knowledge of foreign languages and customs, cultural refinement, and an elevated social status. The length of the Tour depended on each traveler's wealth but typically lasted anywhere between several months to years. This custom peaked in the eighteenth century, earning the century the title "Age of the Grand Tour." As a result of the Grand Tour's popularity and impact on art, the eighteenth century abounded with travel literature. Travel writing, in turn, influenced Gothic fiction, like The Romance of the Forest.

"As [Adeline] viewed the flowery luxuriance of the turf, and the tender green of the trees, or caught, between the opening banks, a glimpse of of the varied landscape, rich with wood, and fading into blue and distant mountains, her heart expanded in momentary joy" (9).

"At first, a small line of inconceivable splendour emerged on the horizon, which, quickly expanding, the sun appeared in all his glory, unveiling the whole face of nature, vivifying every colour of the landscape, and sprinkling the dewy earth with glittering light. The low and gentle responses of birds, awakened by the morning ray, now broke the silence of the hour; the soft warbling rising by degrees till they swelled the chorus of universal gladness" (22).

Card explains that references to travel in Gothic novels suggest that "each Gothic novel is itself the product of a personal experience of travel" (xix). I find it interesting that Ann Radcliffe never visited Savoy or the other regions of her novel, although she beautifully describes the natural world through the eyes of Adeline and La Motte in the novel's first few chapters.