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The Castle of Otranto Horace Walpole tried to blend the wildness and imagination of the old romances with the new genre fiction, and invented the Gothic novel the Castle of Otranto. Gothic, by definition, is a genre of literature characterized by a brooding, gloomy setting, and mysterious or violent events. In 1809 Gothic novels were very popular. This quote from The Castle of Otranto is a good example of it: Theodore at length determined to repair to the forest that Matilda had pointed out to him.
Arriving there, he sought the gloomiest shades, as best suited to the pleasing melancholy that reigned in his mind. In this mood he roved insensible to the caves which had formerly served as a retreat to hermits, and were now reported round the country to be haunted by evil spirits. " (Walpole, ch. 4) This dark, gloomy, mysterious forest is part of the gothic style. Gothic fictions deploy an array of machines, generic engines and formulaic contrivances to arouse mechanical reactions in an era in which industrialization begins to define the modern world. The modern cultural history of the machine metaphor thus discloses not only the uncanny aspect of technological innovation but strangeness at the core of formations of human subjectivity. The Castle of Otranto is a thrilling tale abounds in adventure, suspense, and supernatural occurrences. In a realm where a villain reigns, mysterious events aid in fulfilling a prophecy that spells doom for the ruler and justice for the rightful heir.
Manfred prince of Otranto wanted to capture the power at any price. "In short, Isabella, since I cannot give you my son, I offer you myself. " -- "Heavens!" cried Isabella... "what do I hear! You, my lord! You! my father in law! the father of Conrad!
the husband of the virtuous and tender Hippolita!" -- "I tell you, " said Manfred imperiously, "Hippolita is no longer my wife; I divorce her from this hour. " (Walpole, ch. 1) But he is not the real owner of Otranto and a mysterious prophecy proved it: An ancient prophecy... pronounced, That the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it! (Walpole, ch. 1) The plot of a novel is the mechanism of movement that connects all the description, characterization and conversations. But the process does not simply inform about a reaction to increasing mechanization, it inaugurates an in-human pattern that underlies and shocks the progress of modernity: machines beget machines. Horace Walpole makes no secret of the machinery driving the plot of the first Gothic story: terror, he notes in the first preface, is the "principal engine" of the story. The work is operated by devices and techniques designed to arouse emotional reactions rather than rational evaluation. These devices portraits sighing, gigantic statues crashing to earth are the motors of a plot that subordinates character to action. "Heaven nor hell shall impede my designs, " said Manfred, advancing again to seize the princess.
At that instant the portrait of his grandfather... uttered a deep sigh and heaved its breast... Manfred... saw it quit its panel, and descend on the floor with a grave and melancholy air. (Walpole, ch. 1) The uncanny manifests a movement or displacement which foregrounds disjunction, a destabilization of boundaries within and between psychic and material realities. "What are ye doing?" cried Manfred, wrathfully: "Where is my son?" A volley of voices replied, "Oh, my lord! the prince! the prince!
the helmet! the helmet!" Shocked with these lamentable sounds, and dreading he knew not what, he advanced hastily But what a sight for a father's eyes! He beheld his child dashed to pieces, and almost buried under an enormous helmet, an hundred times more large than any casque ever made for human being, and shaded with a proportionable quantity of black feathers. (Walpole, ch. 1) The aim, Walpole points in his second preface, is "to make them think, speak and act, as it might be supposed mere men and women would do in extraordinary positions, " where "the actions, sentiments, conversations of the heroes and heroines of ancient days were as unnatural as the machines employed to put them in motion, " (Walpole, the second preface). The very different situations in which main characters are placed will require responses that, though remaining in character, as it were, are also very different. Walpole assumes a consistency, privileging character over context; when he goes on to claim that even in encounters with miracles or "the most stupendous phenomena" people "never lose sight of their human character" (Walpole, ch. 1). Humanity, Walpole thinks, is located very much within, independent of setting or situation.
Bibliography: Horace, Walpole. The Castle of Otranto. ed W. S. Lewis. Oxford: OUP, 1982.
Fred, Betting. Gothic Shock: Modernity, Super nature, Technology. eds Britta Herrmann and Barbara This. Aesethtische Erfindung der Moderne, Wurzburg, Konighausen and Neumann, 2003.
Terry, Castle. The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny. New York and Oxford: OUP, 1995.
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Research essay sample on Walpole Ch 1 Castle Of Otranto Gothic
