Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #154461 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780486434124
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Review
Horror tale by Horace Walpole, published in 1765. The work is considered the first gothic novel in the English language; its supernatural happenings and mysterious ambiance were widely emulated in the genre. Manfred is the tyrannical usurper of the princedom of Otranto. On the day his son Conrad is to marry Isabella, Conrad is found dead in the courtyard, crushed by a mammoth plumed helmet. Manfred decides to divorce his wife and marry Isabella in order to produce the heir he needs to retain control of the realm, but Isabella escapes to Father Jerome with the help of Theodore, a handsome young peasant. From a birthmark on Theodore's neck, Father Jerome discovers that the young man is really his natural son, born before he entered the priesthood, when he was the prince of Falconara. Later, the giant form of the martyred rightful prince Alfonso appears, proclaiming Theodore's right of succession, and then ascends to heaven. Manfred and his wife enter separate convents. Theodore marries Isabella and rules Otranto as prince. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

About the Author
Horace Walpole (1717-1797), Fourth Earl of Oxford, was the son of the Whig prime minister Robert Walpole. In 1774 he moved to Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, which he transformed into his "little Gothic castle."

Customer Reviews

The Broadview Edition of Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto
Prospective buyers and users should take note that the Customer Reviews posted on Amazon.com are erroneous. They pertain to previous
editions of Walpole's Gothic novel and do not apply to the Broadview edition. A unique feature of the Broadview edition is the inclusion of Walpole's drama, The Mysterious Mother, sometimes mentioned by literary historians as the first Gothic drama. Thus, the user has at his disposal two important prototypes of the Gothic novel. Appendices include excerpts from Burke's treatise on the sublime, Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance, the Graveyard poets, Hervey's Meditations Among the Tombs, Walpole's correspondence, and the eccentric architectural splendors of Strawberry Hill, Walpole's Gothicized villa on the Thames. I am the edition's editor, Frederick S. Frank, another fact omitted from the Amazon.com descriptor.

Best edition available
Finally someone has provided us with a readable, absorbing, and correct edition of this novel. I've always found this a difficult work, but the introduction and notes are wonderful, reading the book as camp and as opera. The hundreds of errors in the Oxford University Press edition are finally corrected here, and the appendix (providing 75 years of responses to Walpole's romance) makes for hilarious reading. Without question the best available teaching text.

Setting the Tone
"The Castle of Otranto" by Horace Walpole, is regarded as the first novel of the gothic genre. Indeed its short and simple story is filled with the supernatural, and what must nowadays count as caricatures for characters. The charm of the story lies within its historical relevance and what it brought to future stories within that genre, not in the story itself.

Immediately the reader is introduced to the tyrannical prince of Otranto, Manfred, as he is about to marry his sickly son to the princess Isabella in a quest to secure his claim to the throne he may not be entitled to. When Manfred's son Conrad is struck dead, with no witnesses to his ghastly death, Manfred is at a total loss. He strikes upon the idea of marrying the young princess Isabella for himself; when he proposes the notion to Isabella, she is frightened and repulsed and runs away, seeking sanctuary within the castle's monastery. Then ensues Manfred's stalking of Isabella while trying to get out of his marriage to his extremely pious wife Hippolita, while all about the castle the servants and ruling family keep having dreadful visions.

In the end these supernatural visions serve to bring justice to the rightful heir, a young man who unwittingly helps Isabella escape from Manfred's clutches only to fall in love with Manfred's daughter, Matilda. The theme is that of the sins of the father being visited upon the children (even generations later) and is not a new theme in modern literature, but an interesting choice and one that works with the supernatural means Walpole employs to bring it about. While "The Castle of Otranto" is a watershed in the gothic genre, it is by far not the best or most notable work of that period; yet without the blueprint laid meticulously out by Walpole, such greater stories may never have been written.