The Monk: A Romance

Why I created this thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/115964#2939435 (just substitute Matthew Lewis's The Monk for The Castle of Otranto). May contain spoilers, of course.

I gave up on this when I found I'd lost track of which characters were which.

I'm starting over - and this time I'm taking notes!

You might find it fun to follow along on this "tutored read" as you read The Monk. You'll come to appreciate it a lot more this way!

Do take notes!

#3 - Wow. Thanks for that, Squeaky.

You'll really enjoy lyzard's tutoring. She's that good! If any one in your group is interested in being tutored through this book individually, ask her. She just might be willing to give it a go.

She also tutored me through The Castle of Otranto last year. If you're interested in that thread, let me know, and I'll try to find it for you or anyone else in the Gothic Literature group.

You'll probably identify with this. I was having a problem keeping the characters straight in The Monk so this is the diagram I made while working my way through that book (even with tutoring). I found that diagramming the relationships between characters, rather than just listing them, helped me a lot!



Hint: Start with a very LARGE sheet of paper! :)

ETA: It's a great book so make every effort to read it. You'll love the ending!!

Hmmm ... no wonder I lost track ...

:)

I got side-tracked again and never made that start.

I have now, and with a large sketch pad for taking notes as in Squeaky's post.

No offence to Squeaky and lyzard, but I decided not to look at the tutored read until I'd finished the book, as I want to get my own impressions and ideas on it first. In the light of them, I shall enjoy reading through that thread afterwards, though ...

... anyway,

I've read the first chapter.

First impressions: I thought of Thackeray - it's striking me as a social satire stroke comedy, à la Vanity Fair. Well, except for the bit with Antonia and the rhyming gypsy suggesting strongly that it's not, of course.

> 9

The tutored read can be followed basically page by page. Everything is numbered and there are ***NO SPOILERS***. I'm pretty paranoid about that.

Did you wind up finishing it? What did you think?

The Monk was great fun to read. I especially loved the ending.

Get yourself a copy of the book and follow this tutored read with lyzard (Liz).

I read it last year, but alaudacorax stopped posting a month ago, so I was curious about any progress!

#14 - Oops! Never got beyond the first chapter. It's been a rather hectic last month or so, not to mention that my sleep patterns got buggered up - again - and I don't think I read anything longer than a short story or magazine article - and I can't really remember the stuff I did read.

Anyway, a new year, New Year's Revolutions - determined to getting to grips with proper bedtimes, excessive weight, 'Currently reading' pile, and so forth and so on ...

Watch this space, as they say ...

haha, I will be awaiting your thoughts! :P

I have just finished The Monk found this thread when I was searching for any comments on the book. Luckily I managed to read it within a fortnight and was able to keep track of the characters. The characters that threatened to get mixed up for me were Lorenzo and Raymond.

It is my plan to write a review/commentary and I hope to get it done this weekend. I must say it is a fantastic book.

alaudacorax, your comparison to Vanity Fair intrigued me. I read Vanity Fair in 1978 and loved it. You are now pushing me to considering a reread.

In relation to The Monk, I have seen it mentioned in various locations and always meant to read it given its Gothic nature. Only a couple of months ago I bought a copy. The timing of my reading it was prompted by my reading two books by Mervyn Wall. These were, The Unfortunate Fursey and The Return of Fursey. The Fursey books were recently republished by The Swan River Press. The first publication date for The Unfortunate Fursey was 1946 with the sequel coming out in 1948. Fursey was a mediaeval lay monk living in the monastery of Clonmacnoise in Ireland. The devil and his demons come to tempt the monks.

Wall's books were written as humour but also include social commentary on Ireland in the times when the books were written.

It struck me as a good idea to write a comparative piece on the differences and similarities between the Fursey novels and The Monk. It appealed to my sense of humour to compare what is primarily a comic story about a monk with what I thought at the time was a serious Gothic horror story. Now that I have read The Monk I can see a lot more similarities between the books than I had anticipated. I will post that here too, if people are interested.

I am paranoid about spoilers, so I will use the spoiler filter. This does present me with one problem, i.e. it will be very difficult to write about these books without spoilers, so you are warned.

By the way, I enjoyed all three books immensely and would recommend them wholeheartedly, as I would Vanity Fair.

:-)

>17 pgmcc:

I'm definitely interested in reading your thoughts on The Monk and the Fursey books...with the rather shamefaced caveat that I haven't read The Monk in over 20 years (despite having, in the meantime, got two nice editions of it), haven't read Fursey yet, and for that matter, haven't read Vanity Fair either.

Last year's British Library Exhibition (and the accompanying book, Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination) tie The Monk in with the political and intellectual tumult flowing from the French Revolution. The book doesn't mention a comedic or satirical edge to Lewis's novel, and I don't particularly remember it having that - although its tone is a somewhat lofty 18th century Englishman's one, I seem to remember (and was not surprised by!). It doesn't, as far as I can recall, have anything comparable to the camp or even burlesque over-the-top moments of Beckford's Vathek.

>18 housefulofpaper: Vathek is one I have not read and of course it now has to go onto the list. I suspect you have thrown it into the mix to counterbalance the fact that you have not yet read the Fursey's or Vanity Fair. ;-)

In relation to editions of The Monk, Lewis's first edition was the one he withdrew and amended in response to the shock and horror of some people who made accusations of blasphemy, primarily for comments he made about the Bible not being suitable reading for a young lady. The edition I have is the Penguin Classic and, thankfully, it is based on the first edition rather than the watered down subsequent editions.

I can see how the book could be linked to the French Revolution and the general suspicion England would have of the Catholic Church, and England was, at the time terrified of invasion by the French. Having been subject to attempted invasion by the Spanish, Lewis's setting the novel in Madrid would help show how dangerous the Spanish are, and how influenced the people are by the Catholic Church.

The book is very much in the mould of Gothic novels that, as Jarlath Killeen would argue, were written with an underlying message that the Catholic Church is full of superstitious and dangerous tenets and practices, and that it harbours evil. Much of the symptoms of evil described in The Monk have been exposed as real in the scandals in the Catholic Church, particularly in Ireland, over recent decades.

In terms of the humour I would suggest you read the first three pages and then tell me whether or not the humour is apparent to you. I was rolling about laughing when reading those pages. (Note the use of hyperbole in my words.)

>19 pgmcc:

I'm really quite hampered in my reply by not having read the book recently! I'll readily concede that Lewis opens with a "funny bit" of observational comedy; but surely it's a truism that there are plenty of serious, even tragic, works that start on a misleadingly light note - or have moments of light relief throughout. A bit of contrast can even work to make the dark stuff even darker.

That said, I don't think the events of the book are funny - unless the reader finds anything other than strict realism intrinsically ridiculous, but presumably such a reader would also laugh at Hamlet and The Orestia. That being the case I'd suggest that any humour comes from the way the story's told. In this case, from Lewis' amused, patrician authorial voice. As evidence, maybe I can bring in the 2011 film version (dir. Dominik Moll) which I don't think has a single laugh throughout its whole running time.

If I can shamelessly mention Vathek again, by way of contrast, there are some scenes that play like outakes from a Tex Avery cartoon. (And yet, I get the sense that William Beckford had far more emotional investment in his Oriential Gothic tale than Matthew Lewis had The Monk).

>20 housefulofpaper: I agree that the main story events in the book are not funny, and the lead-in is a light relief that is used to introduce a character that is employed, in my opinion, to ridicule aspects of society in many parts of the book. Lewis also uses humour in the first pages to set up his ridicule of the Catholic Church with his descriptions of why the members of the congregation are attending the oration in the Cathedral.

In addition, the almost over-the-top piling on of misery in the novel can be considered humorous. Everybody's story contains tragedy. It is almost as if Lewis was trying to squeeze in every trope of the Gothic that he could think of. The frustrations of Ambrsoiso's designs at almost every step of the way must be Lewis poking fun at his main character. Here we have a stalwart of the Church, the most upstanding man in the world, and his pride is letting him down, and when he does go over to "The Dark Side" his every move is dogged with unintended consequences and mishaps. It is like his life-long training and devotion to God have left him ill equipped to be a bad guy and he fumbles at virtually every attempt to do evil, or should I say, to do the specific evil he intended. I'm sorry, but I think Lewis was having a laugh at Ambrosio's expense.

Not having read Vathek I am unable to comment on your statement concerning emotional investment, but I believe Lewis was trying to use sensationalism to boost his book's popularity. In this context he was more intellectually involved than emotionally. His penchant for being quite graphic in describing some of the hideous scenes in his book could be seen as an attempt to push the boundaries of the genre or to be sensationalist, something he managed to do considering the reaction to the book when it was first released.

I look forward to reading Vathek and seeing how it compares with The Monk.

>21 pgmcc:

I know where you're coming from. I think I can recall having a similar sense of "over-the-topness" at times when I read the book. On the other hand, Lewis's contemporary readers - even sophisticated ones such as Lord Byron, Coleridge, and de Sade - don't seem to have felt the same (if there was a joke, I would have expected Byron and de Sade, at least, to get it).

I had a look at article on Lewis in The Penguin Encyclopaedia of Horror and the Supernatural. It's written by the late Gothic scholar Davendra P. Varma. Nowhere does he give any hint that Lewis was offering a burlesque or spoof, rather "Lewis has an instinct for drama and horror"..."The entire novel has a fascinating, compelling power".

>22 housefulofpaper: I have started reading Vathek.

>23 pgmcc:

After I talked it up, I hope you like it!

>24 housefulofpaper: I am sure I will. I am only at the start where the new wings of his palace are being described. He obviously did not believe in deferred gratification.

housefulofpaper, I am making slow progress with Vathek due to opportunity to read rather than anything to do with the story. I am enjoying it. Stylistically I am finding it more akin to the Arabian Nights than The Monk. I am only about one third of my way through the story but I can see the Caliph is a selfish piece of work and his mother is nasty.

>24 housefulofpaper: I have finished Vathek. I enjoyed it and my comments can be found in my reading thread in the Green Dragon group, here.

Given Beckford's lifestyle and the parallels I noticed between Vathek and the author's own life I must agree with you about emotional involvement. This can only have been increased when the good Reverend who polished off the English translation published it and took the credit for translating the work straight from Arabic.

Other than over-the-topness I did not find anything particularly funny about the story. It is unapologetically evil.

Apart from tracing the success or otherwise of the protagonist in the face of temptation I do not see much in the way of commonality with either the Fursey books or The Monk.

On Wednesday evening I was able to attend a great event that Brian Showers organised in the name of The Swan River Press. It was a night of reminiscences of Mervyn Wall, the author of the Fursey books. It was an excellent night and took place in the National Library of Ireland.

>27 pgmcc:

I'd forgotten about the business with the Rev. Samuel Henley!

On the question of the humour in Vathek, I think my experience of reading the book was pretty close to yours, although the over the top passages threw me somewhat. Like this one, they seemed to be played for laughs:

"The Indian provided good sport, for, as he was short and plump, he had curled himself up into a ball, and rolled about from one point to another, followed by the guards and courtiers who pursued him with extraordinary enthusiasm. Rolling thus from hall to hall, from room to room, the ball drew after it all whom it encountered, and the whole palace, thrown into complete disorder, resounded to the most terrible din."(Translated by Herbert B. Grimsditch).

I think in the previous discussion about the book here, we touched on the somewhat slippery notion of "camp", and whether it would Vathek could be categorised as such.

I understand, from the Swan River Press Facebook page, that the Mervyn Wall event was recorded and Brian intends to post a link when its uploaded. I'm looking forward to that.

>28 housefulofpaper: "Camp" is a word not heard as frequently today as it would have been a couple of decades ago.

I can see how the discussion on whether or not the story is camp arose. Were elements of the story deliberately exaggerated for theatrical impact or were they written in this style due to Beckford's attempting to emulate the style of The Arabian Nights? As became public knowledge during the two Gulf wars it is not uncommon for hyperbole to be used in the Middle East. That is a real non-answer on the question of camp or not, but it does reinforce the validity of the question.
:-)

>30 frahealee: The Monk is a real treat.

>32 frahealee:
The Italian and Melmoth the Wanderer are books I have long been planning to read but never got round to. Thank you for bringing them to mind.

>34 frahealee: I found Nicholas Nickleby very entertaining. I flew through it. I find a high chapter count a good thing. A high chapter count can mean short chapters and I fly through a book with short chapters. I think I will stop reading and realise there are only two pages left to the chapter and read on, then find myself in the next chapter.

Your discovery of an expert on psychopaths in British Columbia unnerving. Are you now wondering why Canadians are such quiet people? Bwahahahah...

>32 frahealee: - Unsure how to redirect it to Radcliffe... ??! ... The Italian

When you are setting up the touchstone, you click on where it says in brackets 'others'. This will should give you a drop-down list of possible alternatives.

To my shame, my project of reading all of the 'key works' listed in Punter & Byron's The Gothic (in chronological order - I'm a bit OCD about these things) has been halted for something like four years by my inability to force myself through The Monk. I think I've tried and failed three times. I'm probably tempting fate writing this, but I am DEFINITELY reading The Monk as my 2019 New Year's Resolution. I might even take it with me over the holidays if I can find the damn thing. I'm trying (yet again) to shame myself into reading it by writing this post.

I shall be embarking on this with some venom, and if successful this time when I succeed expect to see lots of posts from me slagging-off Lewis.

>39 alaudacorax: Good luck! If you make it through the whole book, you’ll love the ending!

>39 alaudacorax:

Thanks.

>9 alaudacorax: Don’t be afraid of the tutored thread. It’s structured in such a way as to not divulge spoilers or move ahead of where you’re reading. Just follow the headings for what to read before you move ahead on that thread. Your reactions are your own and might not agree with mine. Feel free to post your reactions there for others to read!

>45 frahealee:, the chronological list of 'key works' in The Gothic is -

The Castle of Otranto, 1764
Vathek, 1786
The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794
Caleb Williams, 1794 (got right up my nose)
The Monk, 1796
Frankenstein, 1818, revised 1831
Melmoth the Wanderer, 1820
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, 1824
Wuthering Heights, 1847
The Woman in White, 1860
Uncle Silas, 1864
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886
Dracula, 1897
The Turn of the Screw, 1898
Psycho, 1959
Interview with the Vampire, 1976
The Shining, 1977
American Psycho, 1991

By the way, The Gothic is an excellent guide or reference book to have. Before the 'Key works' section it has a 'Gothic writers' section that covers seventy-odd writers separately individually, as well as other sections.

>46 alaudacorax:

... though I personally think it's a bit of an oversight that Carmilla is not in the 'Key works' section ...

>44 frahealee: - I wish Radcliffe had written another five or ten ...

Have you finished all seven of her novels? You're shaming me, I've had a beautiful collection here for quite a while, and I've yet to read them - always meant to start on them after I'd finished the 'Key works'. I sort of slowly fell in love with 'Udolpho' though, eventually reading it two or three times in quite a short period.

>45 frahealee:

Could the differences be down to Lewis toning down/bowdlerising the novel in the second and later editions? I know he did this when the book's notoriety started to work against his career as an M.P. Can you check which text the different media are using?

Where am I with the key works?
The Castle of Otranto - read twice. Have a nice Folio Society edition now.
Vathek - read. Have a nice Folio Society edition of this too.
The Mysteries of Udolpho - still to read, but have in (surprise) Folio's Mrs Radcliffe box set.
Caleb Williams - unowned, unread.
The Monk - read 20+ years ago. Have ended up with 2 nice hardback editions in recent years.
Frankenstein - read the 1818 text in OUP paperback edition in the 1990s. Have the standard text in Folio hardback to read.
Melmoth the Wanderer - Red the Folio Society edition in 1993.
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner - Read, in a Folio Society edition
Wuthering Heights - the shame! Started last year had to stop. Will restart this year.
The Woman in White - unread.
Uncle Silas - read in (you guessed it) a Folio Society edition.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Read this. Yes,, in a Folio Society edition.
Dracula - First read in the '90s. Now have in multiple editions.
The Turn of the Screw - not read yet. it's in a collection of Henry James's ghost stories and I'm currently two away from it, i think.
Psycho - not read, don't own. Only read some of Bloch's Lovecraftian short fiction(which can mostly be classed as juvenilia), so far.
Interview with the Vampire - not read, not really tempted.
The Shining - Read recently. Folio Society edition... :)
American Psycho - no interest in this at all, I'm afraid.

>52 frahealee: - Maybe in my coffin, custom made with real hardwood book shelves!

Yup - you definitely belong in the LT, Gothic Literature group ...

>54 frahealee: If you keep in mind that Lewis was 21 years old when The Monk was published it will influence your feelings about the book and the author’s motivations, not just his political intent.

>50 frahealee:,>51 housefulofpaper:

Well, I've read as far as The Monk and got stuck on that, as I've said.

I notice you both seem a bit dismissive of Interview with the Vampire. You may be right: I've read the book and seen the film, though maybe a decade back, but it doesn't speak well that I can remember very little of either.

The Woman in White is another of those embarrassing books where I have to admit I gave up half-way through, though I remember quite enjoying Collins' The Moonstone, both many years ago, I think.

Frankenstein is one of my all-time favourites. It's connected in my mind with Heart of Darkness because I always seem to find something new when I re-read either. It gives me great pleasure that it's now regarded as a classic well beyond the horror/Gothic genre because it's definitely the kind of book my schoolteachers wouldn't let us read.

Loved Uncle Silas and read it together with our missing leader, Jourdain, and had an enjoyable PM conversation about it. I have a backlist of reading on Le Fanu I really should get on with.

Dracula: as with almost all of Stoker I feel he had the potential to be a lot better than he actually was. Having said that, I've read and enjoyed it several times.

Wuthering Heights is an odd one. I feel I read it as a teenager, but I'm really not sure if that's true or I'm misremembering a couple of film adaptations

Um ... that's it, not very good is it, considering I made a start on deliberately reading this list years - oh my god! - over seven years ago. New Year's Resolutions ... New Year's Resolutions ... New Year's Resolutions ... New Year's Resolutions ...

>57 frahealee: Lewis, in his capacity as a British politician and diplomat was an adamant advocate for Protestantism and was vehementally opposed to Catholic Europe with which England was at loggerheads at the time. The Monk is inferred to be an attack on Catholic Europe, France being the intended target but Spain used to preserve plausible deniability. The demonisation of the Catholic Church is present in many Gothic novels, starting with The Castle of Otranto. While Lewis tempered some of his more extreme elements in The Monk it was to avoid upsetting the decency of his readers. The fact he was attacking Catholic Europe was a boon to his political career in the eyes of his political masters and the audience he was targeting.

The Monk is delish. I'm surprised you couldn't get on with it, Paul, I'd say it's a much pacier read than Frankenstein.

>58 pgmcc:

There's an amusing paradox in the English Gothic classics having an anti-Catholic strain when the Gothic sensibility borrows so much from the traditions and the aesthetics of the (mostly Catholic) Continent.

Here's what my collection of the key works looks like. The turn of the Screw is contained in the Tartarus Press edition of James' ghost stories. Some books, as discussed, are missing.

>62 housefulofpaper:
That is a nice set of books. I have the same folio edition of Uncle Silas but most the others of the key works I have are paperbacks.

Now, if we were talking Aickman and Ligotti I have first editions and Tartarus Press editions. But we are not.

:-)

Hmm--I have those same editions (FS) of The Castle of Otranto and Dracula... Used to have that same Wuthering heights... My edition of The Monk is the 1952 Grove Press hardcover with variant versions and the introduction by John Berryman. I have Hogg in the 1927 Cresset edition, again with an interesting intro, this time by Gide...

My Vathek (1962, Club français du livre) isn't of bibliophile interest, but it's Beckford's French original, introduced by Mallarmé and illustrated by Paul Elie. Cover:

>63 pgmcc:

Thanks! I missed out on the 2-volume Tartarus Press Aickmans, but I made sure I got all their reprints (from 2010 onwards?) of the original volumes of short stories (plus the two volumes of autobiography and, gratingly out of place, the "Faber Finds" paperback of The Late Breakfasters.

I have very few first editions. One I'm quite pleased to have is Arthur Machen's Hieroglyphics (Grant Richards, 1902). There's no interesting story behind my acquiring it, sadly; I was merely browsing on AbeBooks, saw it listed, and thought "I'm having that" :)

The FS Uncle Silas was a real bargain. I bought it in a second hand bookshop whose owner hated hardbacks and saw no resale value in a book from a "reprint house". It was under a fiver, I think (I had to make a repair recently as the hinge was coming away. I wiggled some PVA glue down it using a bamboo skewer. I think that's pretty much the same way that the professionals do it!

I paid over the odds for the Vathek though, in a proper antiquarian bookshop near the British Museum. Even so, it was just about the only thing I could afford.

Although the copy of Melmoth the Wanderer was delivered by post, I happened to see the original cover art and interior painted illustrations when they were on display in the window of Folio's temporary London home in early 1993. This was the antiquarian booksellers Henry Sotheran (a different establishment from the one mentioned above).

>64 LolaWalser:

There's a bombastic listing for that Grove Press edition on AbeBooks :)

The Cresset Press Hogg sounds like a nice edition. I went and found a copy of the press's edition of Robert Herrick's complete poems when it was being discussed in the Fine Press Forum group a few years ago.

The Vathek looks attractive too, bibliophile interest or not. And you can read the original text. This is the moment in the discussion when I become self-conscious and a little guilty about my lack of a second language (never mind a third or a fourth...)

>65 frahealee:

I don't write in them. i suppose it would devalue them but I don't buy them as investments or think about resale value. It's more that the way I acquire them is so pedestrian there doesn't seem much point in memorialising it. If the circumstances are even a tiny bit interesting I tend to remember it (as per above!). The copy of Hieroglyphics is inscribed by the original owner, "G O (or A) Harris September 1st 1902".

>66 housefulofpaper: I managed to get the second printing of the two volume Tartarus Press Aickmans. That will always cause me anguish. :-)

I have two former library copies of The Late Breakfasters first edition. I have bought the F&F copies of the story collections but for some reason have balked at getting the F&F Late Breakfasters. I really enjoyed reading The Late Breakfasters and I keep thinking that the F&F copy is too dear, especially when I have two copies of the first edition. Bibliophilia makes us do strange things and use weird logic.

As it happens I have a funny tale to tell about my acquiring the Folio edition of Uncle Silas.

I was at a book fair in Dublin's Tara Towers hotel and came across a bookcase of gothic and horror books with "Everything half marked price" written on a label and pinned to one of the shelves. Now, this book fair, held every quarter, attracts all sorts of book dealers, some of them rather crusty and abrasive. One such crusty and abrasive dealer was blocking the bookcase and making sure he was getting first pick of the good stuff. He was quite large and forbidding looking and he had already reaped quite a stack of loot from the shelves in question. I scanned the remaining books as best I could from a position behind said crusty and abrasive dealer and spied the Uncle Silas.

Once the dealer was satisfied he had taken everything of worth from the bookcase he moved and I managed to slip in and take Uncle Silas from the top shelf. When I slipped the book out of its case I found €16 written on the inside cover. On presenting it for payment I was charged €8 and was delighted when the crusty and abrasive dealer who had paid for his books and was still talking to the dealer we were buying from spotted the volume and let out a loud gasp and roared, "How the hell did I miss that!"

Little victories. Little victories. They mean so much.

Reading over this thread, I’m quite ashamed at how long I’ve been dithering over this novel. I’ve tried and failed so many times to read it that I’ve decided to keep offline any posts I might get the urge to write, and paste them in if and when I finish; just in case I fail again.

I may have been unfair to this in the past. This time round I’m detecting a lighter tone, perhaps something of cynicism, even flippancy. What ever it is, I’m astonished to now find myself rather enjoying it. Lewis has a knack of making me laugh at times when I’m not completely sure I’m supposed to. For example, the passage in Vol II, Chapter I where Raymond/Alphonso declares his intentions to Donna Rodolpha: surely there is an element of farce there? The reader can see what is going to happen well before Raymond does.

Well, I’ve finished Volumes I and II and, rather to my surprise, I’m still quite enjoying it. The key is that, this time round, I’ve become convinced that Lewis had his tongue firmly in cheek, often quite maliciously so. I’ve read somewhere that he was an argumentative type of person. He seems to me to not only be deliberately trying to provoke various elements of the readership, but trying how many ridiculous things he can get some of them to swallow. My mind can’t help going to Northanger Abbey—I’m sure Lewis is deliberately mocking the Catherine Morelands among his readership. As an example: Raymond/Alphonso and Agnes’s failed elopement from the German castle. This is pretty farcical to start with—Raymond runs off with a ghost by mistake, getting seriously injured in the process; then finds himself cursed with a terrible, nightly haunting; then finds himself unexpectedly rescued by the Wandering Jew. Meanwhile Agnes finds herself locked out of the castle at night, has to knock at the gate to get back in, almost giving the gatekeeper a heart attack by pretending to be the ghost; and, quite naturally, decides Raymond has let her down. But then, when Raymond finally gets to talk to Agnes, long afterwards, she simply accepts his wild story? That’s bad enough, but then the reader remembers that, when they were arranging the elopement, she avowed herself a confirmed sceptic about all this business of ghosts. Surely the whole thing is Lewis trying how much he can persuade the gullible reader to swallow? I imagine Lewis laughing in his sleeve about it. It’s all rather delicious—if you don’t take it too seriously.

Well, I’ve finished reading The Monk. My problem now is that in Volume III I was no longer convinced of Lewis’s mischievousness. He seemed to be writing his tale quite straightforwardly. Even the anti-Catholic tone seemed to be somewhat reined back. Where he’d earlier seemed to impute to Catholicism some of the evils depicted; he now seemed to be blaming rogue elements rather than the church as a whole.
I don’t really know what to make of the book. Perhaps I should think that Lewis was inconsistent in his intentions during writing and leave it at that?

>73 alaudacorax:

I meant that I don't know what to make of the book as a whole. I liked most of the parts; even though the style of them often varied. But thought the basic story worked out and neatly tied up; I couldn't get my head around any deeper intentions Lewis might have had; and I'm suspecting he might not really have had any.

I've got a memory, from when my reading was a lot more serious and structured (that vague idea/ambition of reading through the Western Canon in the 1990s, and actually tackling Chaucer in the original, and getting through Richardson's Clarissa, and so on), that the novel was still developing as an art form in the 18th Century. The very name declares its newness, after all.

Part of that was, I think I remember, noticing a lack of consistency or unity across a whole work. I can't give examples because it's too long ago and I never made notes (a shame, 30 years on and I'd be interested in what 20-something me thought about such things). The Monk might well have been one of the books where I noticed this, but I don't think it ould have been an isolated instance - otherwise surely I'd just have a memory of reading a slightly amateurish book?

>75 housefulofpaper:

Interesting point on the newness of the novel. I confess it hadn't occurred to me during reading. Gives me more to mull over.

I was actually thinking, just before I spotted your post, that I'd like to reread this, and read some relevant lit. studies, in an attempt to get a better understanding of Lewis's background and motives.

But I firmly pulled myself back—I really can't at the moment.

I'm reading it as part of a project of reading the list of 'key works' in Punter & Byron's The Gothic; to my shame, I've been roadblocked on this one for eight years—knocked me right off the project*; and, I've got another thirteen (I think it is) to go. If I start doing multiple reads I'm never going to finish (I seem to remember reading 'Udolpho' three times because I felt I hadn't properly got to grips with it first time round; I must have been months on that.)

And then there are several other reading projects I've either got on the go or in the offing—didn't feel I could subsist on a diet of unadulterated Gothic so I'm alternating with other reads. Well, actually one of those other projects is Ann Radcliffe, which complicates things, but that's another story ...

* Actually, I think it was The Monk coming directly after the 'draining the will to live' Caleb Williams that knocked me off the project. I changed my mind about the former; but all the demons of hell couldn't ... well, never mind ...

I've just finished reading The Monk, by Matthew Gregory Lewis (Penguin Edition, Oct 1998, the 1796 version). I've enjoyed this book, it moves quickly.

Yes, it's easy to mix up the characters.

Especially found the descriptions of the subterranean locations to be interesting.

And some portions were indeed (inadvertently?) humorous.

Now, onto The Mysteries of Udolpho, (Oxford World's Classics) by Ann Radcliffe, Bonamy Dobrée (Editor), Terry Castle (Introduction).

An interesting pair to compare and contrast.