LAUSR

ABSTRACT Drawing on recent phenomenological theories in addition to Paul Henri Thiry’s eighteenth-century theory of thought as movement, this essay argues that Ann Radcliffe’s novels present perception as a process of actively navigating one’s surroundings. Characters’ higher-level mental operations are similarly grounded in corporeal acts of making their way through environments. Appreciating characters’ processes of perceiving and thinking integrates the natural and supernatural aspects of Radcliffe’s novels, which are often treated separately. Additionally, attending to character’s and reader’s acts of navigating sensory confusion foregrounds the moment-to-moment experience of reading gothic novels more effectively than the framework of suspense.