Horace Walpole (1717–1797)

…and sometimes even classics can seem outdated. I have read more than my share of works written in the 18th century and have to begin by observing that I found the writing not so much difficult as overly stylized. This is due, in part, to the fact that Walpole introduced the work with the claim that it was actually a rediscovered text dating to the Crusades; undoubtedly much of the style is attributable to his effort to help “sell” that claim. Understanding the reason, though, show more doesn’t make the work any more enjoyable to read and the often-forced melodrama doesn’t help either. The book is generally credited with being the first true Gothic story, a claim I have no trouble accepting. The story is a mere 83 pages long but I will admit that those 83 pages took me longer to slog through than many books twice or three times as long. While I understand and even happily accept the work’s significance in literary history, I can’t admit to enjoying it, though I have great respect for its inventiveness and its technical construction. I’m glad I read it and even happier than I’ll never need to read it again. (The rating is as high as it is in recognition of the achievement, not how much I enjoyed it.) show less

wild, theatrical, and shockingly funny if you let it be

The Castle of Otranto is one of those books that becomes infinitely more fun the moment you realize you’re supposed to be laughing. Walpole wasn’t writing solemn Victorian gloom; he was a Georgian showman staging a supernatural soap opera with medieval props and zero restraint. Once you give yourself permission to enjoy the chaos on its own terms, the whole thing becomes delightful.

The plot is… well, “plot.” A giant helmet show more falls from the sky. Suits of armor wander around like they’re late for a costume party. Secret princes and long-lost heirs materialize on cue. People faint at the sight of trees. The villain wants to swap brides mid-book because of a prophecy that’s never fully explained. Every emotional reaction is dialed up to 100 and held there.

And the dialogue?
Chef’s kiss.
Everyone is shouting, swooning, or making declarations that would embarrass a telenovela.

This isn’t Gothic as we usually imagine it — no misty Victorian repression, no subtle psychological dread. This is proto-Gothic, built during the Georgian era when the theatrical, the sentimental, and the downright ridiculous were not bugs but features. Walpole is inventing the genre as he goes, and he does it with all the subtlety of a flying helmet.

If you go in expecting brooding atmosphere and dread, you’ll be confused.
If you go in expecting camp, melodrama, and proto-horror absurdity, you’ll have a blast.

Sometimes the fun of reading older literature is letting it be what it is. And Otranto, wild as it is, lays the groundwork for everything that comes after — Radcliffe, Lewis, the Brontës, the Victorians, the whole Gothic line.

I laughed, I rolled my eyes, I admired the audacity.
A chaotic little masterpiece of early Gothic imagination. show less

And so, after having enjoyed several interesting articles about it (most recently this review by writer and critic Ted Gioa) and after referring to it extensively in a blog post of my own (without ever having actually read it), I finally finished Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto.

Considered in isolation, this slight novel is, frankly, underwhelming, especially to modern readers. A faux-medieval tale of chivalric derring-do and supernatural goings-on in a dark Italian castle, its show more convoluted plot is at best unconvincing and at worst bordering on the unintelligible. The characters are disappointingly two-dimensional, the dialogue overly melodramatic. The otherworldly elements are so unsubtle as to come across as grotesque (the novel starts with Conrad, the heir of a noble family, crushed under a giant plumed helmet which has appeared out of thin air) and the novel’s intentionally humorous streak dashes any chance of us feeling any spine-tingling fear just as surely as the “fearful casque” mangles Conrad’s body.

Yet, this 1764 novel deserves respect as (probably) the first Gothic novel, the unlikely instigator of a genre which would give rise to such undoubted masterpieces as, amongst countless others, [b:Frankenstein|18490|Frankenstein|Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1381512375s/18490.jpg|4836639] and [b:The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde|51496|The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde|Robert Louis Stevenson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1318116526s/51496.jpg|3164921]. The Gothic is a genre that still lives on modern horror and weird fiction and its influences spread well beyond the confines of literature.

Seen in this light, The Castle of Otranto starts to reveal merits which might not be immediately obvious. The obsession with the supernatural, the OTT dramatic language, the neo-medievalisms were striking and innovative at the time when the novel was written. What might now seem “facile cliches” (crumbling castles, subterrenean passages, chivalric ideals) would only become “Gothic tropes” after other authors jumped on the Walpole bandwagon. The uncomfortable mix of horror and humour was a peculiarly English trait with roots in Chaucer and Shakespeare. And, underneath the novel’s self-indulgent trappings, there was also an element of radical social critique – the heads of the family come across as abusive, scheming and manipulative; the female characters are not as submissive as (18th century) society might have wanted them to be (Isabella is promised in marriage to the weak Conrad but openly admires other more beautiful knights; Princess Matilda, also pressed into marriage, resists these suggestions and first entertains thoughts of taking the veil then falls in love with a travelling peasant).

Walpole’s novel might, in our day and age, be entertaining for all the wrong reasons, but one cannot deny its incredibly far-reaching cultural impact.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2018/10/feat-gothique-review-of-first-gothic.... show less

"Let the critics have their own way; they give me no uneasiness. I have not written the book for the present age, which will endure nothing but cold common sense."
-- Walpole, letter to Madame du Deffand (1765?)

The novel doesn't read as smoothly or engagingly as a thriller written today, but it's chock-a-block full of arresting scenes and images: the Prince's teen heir crushed beneath a giant casque falling from nowhere; an ancestral portrait leaves its frame, displeased with events; rumour show more of incest and forced betrothal; secret passages and trap doors; mute knights; duels between champions; a hermit in haunted caverns by the sea; riddles and portents; a praying skeleton & a bleeding statue.

These are punctuated with mad designs and intrigues by a large cast of characters, scheming against one another and initially it is bedlam, unclear to me which are in the right and deserving of my support.

"It was his object to unite the marvellous turn of incident, and imposing tone of chivalry, exhibited in the ancient romance, with that accurate exhibition of human character, and contrast of feelings and passions, which is, or ought to be, delineated in the modern novel."
-- Sir Walter Scott, Introduction (1811)

Scott later chastises Walpole for putting too much into the novel, overfilling it with supernatural events such that our senses of fear and terror are overwhelmed. I allow there are a great many of what now count as cliché and stereotype; for me these keep the story aloft. If anything, with a poor recollection of the details from reading years ago, I worried there would be too little in the way of weird or wondrous, so Walpole's largesse was welcome.

"The Castle Of Otranto ... is not so much a novel as a state of mind."
-- Marvin Mudrick, Introduction (1963)

This 2022 re-reading was more or less an impulse read in the spirit of Hallowe'en. I should consider Vathek for next season. show less