ABSTRACT
In The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Radcliffe addresses how people construct imaginative experience and invent numinous objects out of perfectly ordinary ones, all in order to suit their emotional needs based on the dilemmas of their everyday lives. By tracing anxieties about sight in particular, Radcliffe explores the capacity of literal visual imagery to construct a new perceptual experience through a re-fashioning of the senses and the imagination. Radcliffe uses a conception of vision similar to Berkeley's theory to account for the numerous times that Emily sees someone who is not really there. Emily is no longer frightened in Udolpho when she understands the symbolic nature of vision. In 1709 Bishop George Berkeley published his most secular work, A New Theory of Vision. Berkeley's A New Theory of Vision complicated the previous camera obscura model by insisting on the perfection of the subjective perceiver rather than on the incongruity of the object.
