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Title: Melmoth the Wanderer (Oxford World's Classics (Paperback)) by Charles Maturin ISBN: 0-19-283592-0 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.4 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Melmoth - The Anti-Quixote
Comment: Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer" is a brilliantly constructed work of gothic fiction. One hundred years after Jonathan Swift, Maturin takes up his Irish predecessor's gift for harsh, even malevolent satire against any and all offenders - organized religion, government, lovers, warriors - even making broad, devastating comments on humanity in general. Maturin and his characters are quick to point out that this is not 'Radcliffe-romance' gothic, in the direct style of works like "The Mysteries of Udolpho". They are right. Rather than the seemingly landscape-obsessed, rationalistic Radcliffe, Maturin takes his direct gothic influences from the claustrophobic psychological terrors of Godwin's "Caleb Williams," Lewis' "The Monk," and M.W. Shelley's "Frankenstein."
Unlike "The Monk," however, Maturin's novel does not rely heavily on Lewis' supernatural machinery (ghosts, demons, bleeding nuns, etc.). Instead, he offers several apparently unconnected stories that concentrate on families in desperate straits and individuals in extreme crises, pushing the limits of man's inhumanity to man. The connecting element, the wild card with the wild eyes, that pops up just when the characters most/least need him, is Melmoth the Wanderer.
"Melmoth" also draws heavily from Cervantes' "Don Quixote," which provides a great point of comparison for the main character. Where Don Quixote was a wandering knight, pledged to help the helpless, Melmoth is a wandering agent of evil, whose mission is to prey on the helpless. Melmoth has 150 years to tempt the indigent and desperate into selling their souls for wealth, power, or simple relief, and trading places with him.
Again looking backward to "Quixote" and forward to Stoker's "Dracula," "Melmoth" is also heavily concerned with it's own construction as a text. The various stories are pieced together by eyewitnesses, interviewers, and ancient manuscripts, often at several removes from their originals. There is even one gentleman in the novel who is collecting material to write a book about Melmoth the Wanderer.
This is not a book for everyone. Maturin often provides almost excessively long preludes before any action occurs in his nested narratives. The traumas he inflicts on Melmoth's targets can drive you to the point of insanity yourself. However, if you are a admirer of the psychological thriller without all the show of your standard gothic-terror text, "Melmoth the Wanderer" is sure to keep you busy for days, if not weeks.
Rating: 4
Summary: Very long, VERY goth
Comment: Let's dispense with the formalities. Melmoth the Wanderer is a really long, really verbose book. However, it is a MASTERPIECE of gothic literature. Its best parts (and there are many) surpass Poe's nightmarish tales for sheer paranoia and fear, but the inordinate amount of time Maturin takes to reach the next denoument in the story took away from my overall perception of the novel. Very long, and gothic to the point of absurdity. (you'll love it!)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Greatest Gothic Novel
Comment: Written by a man who assumed his brother's debts and apparently went out of his mind trying to write himself out from under this monetary burden; a man who wore a wafer pasted to the center of his forehead while writing, and who fancied the ballroom and dancing just as much (or maybe more) than the pulpet;--Melmoth the Wanderer is simply the oddest and most delicious concoction of mad prose this side of Abiezzar Cope. The story is a vertiginously creaky assemblage of vignettes that spiral in and out of each other in a bewildering--and sometimes belabored--manner. We often wish we could rip out 50 or so pages of purple prose here and there and throw them into the mouths of the nearest BLACK DOGS from Hades, but we must restrain ourselves enough to follow Melmoth (the chuckling friend--or should we say fiend?--of John Dee and Edward Kelly it turns out)--to his ultimate damnation. Scattered throughout the text are poppies of arcane lore--the very kind of volume that Poe would have had in his hands when the Raven came tapping at his chamber door! Not only did Poe love this book, but so did Doestoyevsky, Balzac, Lautreamont, Oscar Wilde, Scott, and hoards of other literary greats! Hey--add your name to the list!
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Title: The Mysteries of Udolpho (Oxford World's Classics) by Ann Ward Radcliffe, Bonamy Dobree, Terry Castle ISBN: 0192825232 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Monk (Oxford World's Classics) by Matthew Lewis, Howard Anderson ISBN: 0192833944 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: Vathek (Oxford World's Classics) by William Beckford, Roger H. Lonsdale ISBN: 0192836560 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story by Horace Walpole, Lewis. W. S., E. J. Clery, W. S. Lewis ISBN: 0192834401 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: The Vampyre: And Other Tales of the Macabre by John Polidori, Robert Morrison, Chris Baldick ISBN: 0192838946 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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