By Jasmine Starbuck · October 2026 edition · 31 October 2026
Jasmine Starbuck explores collective judgement, Gothic fiction and the search for justice in Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian.
Poetic justice and collective judgement
Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian (1797) follows Vincentio di Vivaldi, son of a Marchese, in his efforts to secure his marriage to Ellena Rosalba. Set in Inquisition-era Italy (although Radcliffe is not praised for any level of historical accuracy), the novel follows the couple as they encounter several hurdles to their union, including an Inquisitorial trial, the overreaching hand of a devilish monk (Father Schedoni), and the authority of the Marchesa and her connections to convents. At the core of the novel is the search for justice. Although the term is invoked by both heroes and villains, the novel ultimately endorses a specific understanding of justice by aligning it with the overarching resolution of 'poetic justice ‘.
In The Italian, poetic justice is the union of Vivaldi and Ellena, unsurprising given the novel’s roots in Romanticism. However, it is an interesting example of Romanticism, and it deviates from the script assigned to the methods of poetic justice. As Michasiw observes, Radcliffe’s work stands out because the protagonists do not realise their own individual power and utilise the dissolved legal institutions.1 The expectation of the genre is that Ellena and Vivaldi would achieve poetic justice (synonymous with their union) through similar methods to the antagonists’: a grasping of legal power by the individual to dictate justice. Rather, Vivaldi and Ellena’s happy ending is not really achieved by their own interventions, but by a collectivism that starkly contrasts with the individualism that permeates the methods of villainy in The Italian. This idea of collectivism can be defined as the contributions and judgements of multiple individuals, specifically the insight derived from social interactions and existence. It is this idea that acts as a foundation for the idea of a jury trial, collective judgement being most valuable in the pursuit of justice.
However, The Italian contains no jury trial. Rather, the collectivism that drives the realisation of justice is felt through the alignment of characters immersed in societies and able to make judgements based on their social position. Significantly, an endorsement of the jury system is contextually fitting, as public support for juries was at its peak in 18th-century England.2 The absence of a physical jury in the novel allows for a more idealised exploration of the tenets of jury decision-making and removes any legal formalities or institutional restrictions that the novel has previously challenged. This idealised presentation is essential for driving home the support of the jury, and by extension, an English way of life, that is core to the early Gothic. Widely analysed as an expression of anxiety toward the French Revolution, 18th-century Gothic was set on presenting the continent unfavourably. This explains the villainous, Catholic institutions and at the core of The Italian is an emphasis on the injustice of the Inquisition. In the words of Vivaldi, the Inquisition allows for ‘a single enemy sufficient to accomplish my destruction’, a direct opposition to the merits of a jury, which removes the concentration of legal power and ‘the danger from corruption and subornation’.3
Social knowledge and the absent jury
How then is this ‘jury’ and collective justice evidenced in the novel? Its ideal formulation: the democratic input around justice and discourse, which can challenge hegemony, can be seen best through two minor characters. Paulo, Vivaldi’s servant, is the first character to introduce the story of the confession at the Black Penitents (the alternative title to the novel and a core mystery), acknowledging that the ‘story is not generally known’.4 Paulo’s nature as a ‘true Neapolitan’ appears to be the source of his knowledge and familiarity with the setting, and he can advance detailed descriptions: ‘for that dusky aisle is lighted only by one lamp, which hangs at the end next the painted window, except when the tapers…’5 Paulo’s proximity and insight, which help solve the mystery, demonstrate that social immersion leads to well-informed judgements. This idea is part of Fortescue’s seminal defence of the English jury as he suggests that other countries lack a high enough concentration of worthy individuals to serve on a jury, which would result in them constructing juries ‘of persons so remote from the fact in dispute that they do not know the truth about it’.6 The specifics of the argument are not necessarily retained with the development of the jury; however, the idea that a jury ought to be composed of individuals from the same society the offence took place in is critical. This is not so that they know of the crime, but to ensure that they are ‘peers’ in the sense that they share the same culture of social norms and an understanding of the collective justice that underpins the society.
Paulo’s trait is shared by Ellena and Schedoni’s unnamed guide, who is equally presented as an individual immersed in society, which grants him insight to make just judgements and identify Schedoni as a villain. As an outsider, the guide represents the notion that a jury has a broad knowledge base because it is composed of multiple individuals, all with distinct experiences and insights. This broader knowledge base and combination of multiple personalities allows for the jury to build a more comprehensive idea of what constitutes justice and, in turn, identify injustice.
Additionally, the guide and Paulo both stereotype the overly chatty servant.7 Their display of excessive discourse highlights the way these characters reflect a jury as an idealised model of jury deliberation: discourse which leads to justice.8 Discourse allows for conceptions of justice and interpretations to be tested and analysed by one’s peers, and it is what the jury trial functions on. Furthermore, returning to Foucault, ‘discourses are the complex networks of statements that make knowledge possible’.9 The talkative nature of the servants is the fundamental element which allows them to create the knowledge systems which become critical in the delivery of justice.
The theatre of judgement
The notion of collective, social judgement is also presented when Schedoni and Ellena come across a town experiencing festivities. Their guide remarks that their entrance to this society is like ‘coming out of purgatory into paradise’.10 A Roman Catholic understanding of purgatory is that it is an intermediate place before sins are expiated and judgement on suitability for entrance into heaven is made; the distinguishing factor between purgatory and paradise is therefore judgement.11 This metaphor can therefore be viewed as identifying societies as the locus of judgements, which is a fitting allusion for what Schedoni will experience. As they move through the festivities, there are multiple allusions to the villainy of Schedoni, including a magician turning a ‘monk into a devil’ and a performance of the tragedy of Virginia. 12
As the guide witnesses the tragic performance, he calls out, ‘What a scoundrel! What a villain! See! He has murdered his own daughter!’ and Schedoni is forced to confront the crimes he had intended upon.13 His emotional reaction to seeing his crimes performed is said to have ‘inflicted a punishment almost worthy of the crime he had meditated’.14 The allusion is that Schedoni’s punishment derives from his guilt at realising how abhorrent his decisions have been when they are exposed in a public setting.
Furthermore, this exposure through the theatre is significant as the courtroom itself serves as a theatrical space, as a trial aims to reenact the crime and evoke an emotional response which aids in the identification of guilt.15 Additionally, through the act of performance, theatre invites the audience and society to put characters and decisions on trial.16 As Schedoni sees his actions being put on trial, he is exposed to the response that society has for his criminality through the reaction of the guide, and he is served a jury's verdict. This society therefore replicates the justice system through their production of theatre. Just as theatre invites its audience to put characters on trial, the novel itself extends this invitation to its readers. As Ward explores, literature which explores the legal situation, with a particular focus on the individual’s motivation, places readers in positions where they are equally invited to make judgement.17 Literature is therefore the arena for deliberation both within the novel and through the novel itself, reinforcing The Italian's argument that justice is best realised through collectivism.
Fiction as a source for intellectual history
To summarise, Radcliffe’s work consolidates an 18th-century understanding and support of the jury. With more analysis, the novel can also be seen to deliver criticisms of judges and decision-makers, all reflecting the debates that occupied the legal and political minds in the late 1790s. Although Radcliffe’s work ought to be treated within its appropriate context, and she was by no means an accurate historian or legal theorist, the novel has some interesting offerings for the work of legal and intellectual historians. Legislation, political discourse and intellectual works can reveal the support for the jury and anxieties about the Continent, but they cannot, on their own, show how deeply these ideas entered popular culture or how they were made meaningful beyond formal argument. Fiction offers a further kind of insight; particularly the Gothic, as literature of fear, it can allow for an exploration of the emotional proscriptions attributed to social, political and legal change. This paper is therefore a call to arms, to emphasise the value in exploring unconventional or ‘lowbrow’ sources in the development of intellectual history.
Notes
1. Kim Ian Michasiw, ‘Ann Radcliffe and the Terrors of Power’ (1994) 6 Eighteenth-Century Fiction 327, 330 <https://doi.org/10.1353/ecf.1994.0006>. ↩
2. Douglas Hay, “The Class Composition of the Palladium of Liberty,” in Twelve Good Men and True (Princeton University Press, 2014), 305-6. ↩
3. Shelley Lockwood (ed), ‘In Praise of the Laws of England’ in John Fortescue, Sir John Fortescue: On the Laws and Governance of England (1st edn, Cambridge University Press 1997) 47 <https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139170512.006>. ↩
4. Ann Radcliffe, The Italian, or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents (Oxford University Press, 1998), 72. ↩
5. Radcliffe, The Italian, 80. ↩
6. John Fortescue, “In Praise of the Laws of England,” in Sir John Fortescue: On the Laws and Governance of England, ed. Shelley Lockwood (Cambridge University Press, 1997), 44. ↩
7. This stereotype is present in the majority of Radcliffe’s works, for an overview and further analysis of how the servants function as narrators or engage in critical dialogue see Chapter 2 of Kathleen Hudson, ‘Tell It My Own Way’: Servant Narratives in Early Gothic Literature’ [2015] University of Sheffield <oai:etheses.whiterose.ac.uk:12555>. ↩
8. Douglas Hay, “The Class Composition of the Palladium of Liberty,” in Twelve Good Men and True (Princeton University Press, 2014), 309. ↩
9. John Nale and Leonard Lawlor (eds), ‘Discourse’ The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon (Cambridge University Press 2014) 121 <https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139022309.024>. ↩
10. Radcliffe, The Italian, 273. ↩
11. Robert Osei-Bonsu, ‘Purgatory: A Study of the Historical Development and Its Compatibility with the Biblical Teaching on the Afterlife’ (2012) 2 Philosophy Study 286. ↩
12. Radcliffe, The Italian, 274. ↩
13. Radcliffe, The Italian, 274. ↩
14. Radcliffe, The Italian, 275. ↩
15. Barbara Hughes-Moore, ‘Law and Theatre’ in Daniel Newman and Russell Sandberg (eds), Law and Humanities (Anthem Press 2024) 188. ↩
16. Barbara Hughes-Moore, “Law and Theatre,” in Law and Humanities, ed. Daniel Newman and Russell Sandberg (Anthem Press, 2024), 191. ↩
17. Ian Ward, Law and Literature: Possibilities and Perspectives (1st edn, Cambridge University Press 1995) 142–3 <https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511519260>. ↩
Word count: 1,530 words in the submitted main text, excluding headings, notes and editorial material.
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Jasmine Starbuck, “A No-Man Jury: Collectivism and Justice in Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian,” The Intellectual Historian, October 31, 2026. October 2026 edition.
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