Product Description

First published pseudonymously in 1764, The Castle of Otranto purported to be a translation of an Italian story of the time of the crusades. In it Walpole attempted, as he declared in the Preface to the Second Edition, "to blend the two kinds of romance: the ancient and the modern." Crammed with invention, entertainment, terror, and pathos, the novel was an immediate success and Walpole's own favorite among his numerous works. The novel is reprinted here from a text of 1798, the last that Walpole himself prepared for the press.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #296680 in Books
• Published on: 1998-07-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Review

see record 3842

About the Author
E. J. Clery is Research Fellow in English at Sheffield Hallam University and author of The Rise of Supernatural Fiction 1762-1800 (1995).

Customer Reviews

The original Gothic novel
Manfred is an usurpator who wants to consolidate his reign over Otranto. So he tries to marry his weak son to Isabella, heir to a more legitimate prince. But there is an old prophecy which warns against such moves, and the day of the wedding a gigantic iron helmet falls over Manfred's son's head. Then, a creepy -mostly funnily creepy- tale develops. But the plot, though wild and entertaining, is the least important thing about this 1764's novel.

The really attractive, entertaining and literarily important thing is the creation of stereotypes: the foul weather; an ancient, dark castle full of closed halls, secret passages, corridors and doors; frightening apparitions; wicked tyrants desperate for fertile women; virtuous and pure ladies; heroic lads; dark and cold forests where ghosts appear, etc. Walpole, who seems to have been an interesting man, must have had enormous fun writing this tone-setting book, which has had plenty of children in literature. When I read it I kept imagining the scenes, the settings and the weather, and it was great to imagine it come alive. Literarily imperfect, it is fun to read and to discover where many of the commonplaces in Gothic literature come from. Well worth it.

A strangely epitomizing expression of gothic literature
I read this book back in May, 2005, as part of my Gothic Lit. class. It's not a book I'd read again strictly for pleasure, but there is a strange quality to it that beckons me to read it again.

While a fairly absurd and not-very-frightening book (at least to modern readers), this book is worth reading as it seems to contain every element that is a staple of gothic fiction -- and why not? It's the first, after all.

After the class and a little thought, I lean toward considering the following elements to be the staples of "true" gothic stories:

1. Numinous (frightening and awe-inspiring) supernatural elements (one could say that should be drawn loosely from real-world beliefs, but I won't make that stipulation myself)

2. Excessive violence (not necessarily blood/guts/gore, but something that leaves you thinking "that wasn't called for")

3. Sexual perversion (not necessarily anything explicit, just hints at something "not right" -- this element makes things both more exciting and more menacing)

4. Madness

5. Helpless hero (necessarily useless, but overwhelmed, unable to accomplish everything and/or take an active approach to the problem)

6. Social injustice (a challenge to "life as usual")

6. Religion gone wrong (a bleaker, maybe questioning look at religion and religious beliefs)

The surprising thing is that it does this while remaining a fairly tame book. It's excessive violence is performed off-camera, as does the majority of its supernatural elements. Manfred's desire to leave his wife on the basis that their marriage is actually incestuous in order to marry his late son's fiance was sufficiently disturbing to me but far even from X-rated. Manfred is flighty and prone to a kind of mania. The hero is vastly overwhelmed, stays on the defense, and is unable to save the one thing most important to him. At the heart of the novel are pointed social and religious questions/commentary.

One of the things that has fascinated me with this book is the retellings it has inspired in The Old English Baron and The Castles of Athlin & Dunbayne. Both of those are significantly less gothic than Otranto (especially Castles, which is not gothic at all), but are better retellings of the core romance between the hero and his love.

All in all, I'd recommend this work to anyone interested in gothic literature. I'd also recommend The Old English Baron and The Castles of Athlin & Dunbayne (especially the latter) as better retellings of the romance in the book.

Well, It Should've Worked...
A high school English teacher, I assigned The Castle of Otranto to my 50 sophomores. They're a tough sell when it comes to books. (They're against them.) Still, I thought these kids might be interested in the one book that defined gothic horror, a genre much beloved by teenagers today. Forget it. They hated it. What was spooky to Walpole is hokum to youngsters who consider The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre one of the Ten Best Movies Ever Made. In desperation, I tried to teach the book as an example of 18th century camp, but campiness isn't a concept a 15 year old appreciates. Can 60 tenth-graders all be wrong? Yes, of course they're wrong. It should've worked, but it didn't. Next year, it's back to The Mayor of Casterbridge. That'll teach 'em to complain.