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Critical and Iconographic Reinterpretations of Three Early Gothic Novels

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Critical and Iconographic Reinterpretations of Three Early Gothic Novels ADVERTIMENT. Lʼaccés als continguts dʼaquesta tesi queda condicionat a lʼacceptació de les condicions dʼús establertes per la següent llicència Creative Commons: http://cat.creativecommons.org/?page_id=184 ADVERTENCIA. El acceso a los contenidos de esta tesis queda condicionado a la aceptación de las condiciones de uso establecidas por la siguiente licencia Creative Commons: http://es.creativecommons.org/blog/licencias/ WARNING. The access to the contents of this doctoral thesis it is limited to the acceptance of the use conditions set by the following Creative Commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/?lang=en . Critical and Iconographic Reinterpretations of three early Gothic Novels. Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Influences in William Beckford’s Vathek, Ann Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest and Matthew G. Lewis’s The Monk. UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA Department of English and German PhD in English Studies 2016 Critical and Iconographic Reinterpretations of Three Early Gothic Novels. Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Influences in William Beckford’s Vathek, Ann Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest and Matthew G. Lewis’s The Monk. Supervisor Professor Andrew Monnickendam Maria Teresa Marnieri Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Andrew Monnickendam, for his invaluable support and precious suggestions, and express my deepest gratitude for his patient and encouraging tutoring. I am indebted to Professor Sara Martín Alegre, Professor Jordi Coral Escola, and Professor Joan Curbet Soler, whose teachings and ideas were a great inspiration, and to Professor Maria Jose Solé Sabater for her constant help and assistance. I am grateful to Professor Stuart Gillespie and Professor David Hopkins for their studies on literary translations that influenced my research. I thank Dr. Alexandra Prunean for her encouragement and all the people who sustained me during my research. A special thanks to Adrián. UAB, Bellaterra TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements i Summary 1 1. Introduction 3 1.1. The Mystery of Gothic Genesis 3 1.2. Rationale Behind this Study 12 2. The Classical and the Gothic: Lucretius, Dante, and Exoticism in William Beckford’s Vathek 21 2.1. An Unusual Multilingual Narrative 21 2.2. Education and Luxury: the Progress of Vathek 24 2.3. Varieties of Orient and Other Influences 28 2.4. Gothic and Romantic in Vathek 32 2.5. Real and Literary Magic 41 2.6. Venetian Theatrical Inventions 46 2.7. Beckford and the Classics 48 2.8. Lucretius and Beckford 54 2.9. Dante and Italian Literature in Vathek 75 2.10 Iconographies for Beckford 84 2.11 Some final ideas 89 3. Virgilian Idyllic, Gothic Terror, and Ariostean Magic in Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest 107 3.1. The Mysteries of a Gothic Visionary 107 3.2. Dichotomies in Radcliffe 111 3.3. Beckford, Radcliffe, Lewis: Antithetical and Complementary 115 3.4 Influences from the long Eighteenth-Century and Other Periods 117 3.5. The Enigma of Castles and Ruins 121 3.6. Mysterious landscapes between Reality and Imagination 124 3.7. Italy and France: Real, Fictitious, and Fictional Journeys 126 3.8. Radcliffe’s Heroines, Love and Marriage 130 3.9. The Romance of the Forest: Interpretations and Techniques 134 3.10. Classic Antiquities and Latin Literature 136 3.11. Virgilian Idyllic: Pastoral, Bucolic, and Sublime 144 3.12. Ariosto’s Angelica and Female Sublimation 158 3.13. Iconographies in The Romance of the Forest 165 3.14. A Final Meditation on Radcliffe 170 4. Ovidian Moments, Greek Drama, and Gothic Boccaccio in Matthew G. Lewis’s The Monk 193 4.1. An Ambiguous Novel 193 4.2. Lewis’s Reception by Contemporaries 196 4.3. Diversified Opinions on the Novel 199 4.4. Lewis versus Beckford and Radcliffe 206 4.5. Cultural Experiences and Sources 211 4.6. British Matrixes 215 4.7. Eighteenth Century and Classical Discourse 219 4.8. The Dialectics of Antiquity and the Impact of Ancient Drama 223 4.9. Euripides and Greek Drama 225 4.10. Latin Literature and Ovidian Moments 219 4.11. Middle Ages, Boccaccio, and Dante 247 4.12. The Monk and its Iconography 254 4.13. Some Conclusive Hypotheses 260 5. Conclusion 281 Works Cited 291 Annex - Art Works 311 Reference: MLA (7th edition) Quotations reproduce original spellings and words Critical and Iconographic Reinterpretations of Three Early Gothic Novels. Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Influences in William Beckford’s Vathek, Ann Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest and Matthew G. Lewis’s The Monk Summary The purpose of this doctoral dissertation is to investigate and better understand the multiple influences that, together with the development and spreading of literary translations (highlighted by Stuart Gillespie and David Hopkins), played an important role in the rise of the early Gothic novel at the end of the eighteenth century. While deeply inspired by and imbued with internationally recognised critical literature of the Gothic, this study avoids assuming the critical stances of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It proceeds backward in time, scrutinizing the authors, their cultural background, their knowledge, and their eighteenth-century perspectives. The focus is concentrated on the first manifestations of the Gothic genre in the decades that followed the novelty introduced by Horace Walpole with The Castle of Otranto in 1764. The restricted fin de siècle timespan (1786-1796) of the early Gothic works that is explored in this thesis is inversely proportional to the high level of creativity and inventiveness of their authors. This dissertation aims at demonstrating that the pervasiveness and reiteration of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance themes were consciously chosen and adapted to their plots by William Beckford (Vathek, 1786), Ann Radcliffe (The Romance of the Forest, 1791), and Matthew G. Lewis (The Monk, 1796), whose novels were an interesting and unusual syncretism of literary, cultural, and iconographic ideas and resources that they absorbed both from their contemporaries and, most importantly, from authors of the past. The three novels analysed in this thesis were written before, during, and after the French Revolution, which has been taken by many as a point of reference for and as a cause of the Gothic. The aim of this study is also to demonstrate that the association with the French Revolution is a critical convention a quo, which does not take into consideration Gothic peculiarities that already existed before the dramatic events in France. Other important aspects included in this investigation are the function of architectures, landscapes and iconographies in the novels. The dissertation is divided into five parts. The first part introduces the major themes and the rationale behind this investigation together with the motivation for embarking on a study on the Gothic. The central body is represented by three chapters. Every chapter analyses one novel and underscores its connection with authors such as Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, and many others. The fifth chapter contains the conclusion and the future hypotheses of investigation brought about by this research. The bibliography features a variety of source texts and translations that were known to the novelists examined in this dissertation. The three Gothic writers’ language inevitably reflected and echoed themes and styles inherited from authors of different epochs. An iconography annex introduces a series of paintings and images that showed relevant associations with Gothic beauty, mystery, and horror. 1. Introduction and Rationale 1.1. The Mystery of Gothic Genesis Reactions to early Gothic fiction were mixed from its first appearance in 1764 with the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. Afraid of negative opinions, Walpole (1717-1797) used a pseudonym and presented the novel as a translation of a medieval Italian manuscript. He explained in the preface that his choice was due to the “novelty of the attempt to bend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern”. Caught by surprise, critics tried to find reasonable motivations for the public’s enthusiastic reception.1 Although Walter Scott (1771-1832) only partially appreciated Gothic literature, he contributed to raising awareness of the genre, to which other authors and poets, especially the Romantics, became indebted, despite their reluctance to admit its influence. In his introduction to the 1811 edition of the Castle of Otranto, Scott defined the novel as “remarkable not only for the wild interest in the story, but as the first modern attempt to found a tale of amusing fiction upon the basis of the ancient romances of chivalry” (Wilmarth Lewis viii).2 In spite of its success, scholars considered the Gothic genre as a secondary form of literary production, especially when Walpole’s example was followed by other writers, many among them women. The Gothic became the object of scrutiny in different periods, starting from its development during the second half of the eighteenth century until the present day.3 Michael Munday investigated the attention that early critical reviews paid to the Gothic. Even if only some writers, such as Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), Henry Fielding 3 (1707-1754) and Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)4, were generally recognised as accomplished authors, literary magazines took Gothic production into consideration even though the reputation of the novel, in general, and of the Gothic, in particular, was rather low. Critics had a tendency to “hit out at the Gothic novel, the bête noire of both the Edinburgh and the Quarterly” (205). Munday explains that John Wilson Croker had expressed the desire to “expose the raving nonsense which novel readers are content to receive as sublimity and pathos” (206). The severe critic reprehended both Gothic authors and their avid readers. The critical remarks exposed circulating libraries scarce cultural contents as well. Munday mentions the critic John Gibson Lockhart, active at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He dismissed William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794) for its “gliding phantoms and unearthly horrors” (211).
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