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Title: The Monk by Matthew G. Lewis, Louis F. Peck, J. Berryman ISBN: 0-8021-5107-8 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: April, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.36 (25 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Ultimate Gothic Classic
Comment: Matthew Lewis wrote "The Monk" in ten short weeks at the age of nineteen. Immediately the subject of controversy upon its publication in 1796, Lewis was prosecuted and subsequent editions of the book were heavily censored. Coleridge described it as blasphemous, "a romance, which if a parent saw it in the hands of a son or daughter, he might reasonably turn pale." Yet, "The Monk" was so popular that its author became a minor celebrity-coming to be known as "Monk" Lewis--and Sir Walter Scott prounounced that "it seemed to create an epoch in our literature." And whether "The Monk" truly created an epoch in English literature, or merely marked the early apogee of a genre, it stands as a stunning example of the Gothic novel.
"The Monk" tells the story of Ambrosio, the ostensibly pious and deeply revered Abbot of the Capuchin monastery in Madrid, and his dark fall from grace. It is a novel which unravels, at times, like the "Arabian Nights", stories within stories, a series of digressions, the plot driven by love and lust, temptations and spectres, and, ultimately, rape, murder and incest. It is sharply anti-Catholic, if not anti-clerical, in tone, Ambrosio and most of its other religious characters being profane, murderous, self-centered hypocrites cloaked in displays of public piety. And while it sometimes seems critical of superstition, "The Monk" is replete with Mephistophelian bargains, supernatural events, appartions, and spectres, as well as entombment and dark forebodings of mystery and evil. It is, in short, a stunningly entertaining, albeit typically heavy-handed, Gothic novel, perhaps the ultimate classic of the genre.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great undiscovered gothic novel!
Comment: I'm a senior in high school and am taking an enriched novels course. My teacher somehow discovered this book and tried to get us excited to read it by lauding all the sex and incest contained within. Well, there hasn't been much sex, and what little there is is described as "giving into passions" and other flowery phrases. My teacher would have made me more excited to read the book if she hadn't lauded the incest as much as simply telling me that it contains three main plots, all richly described and woven together, and that it doesn't feel nearly as old as it is (it was written in the 1700s). There's Ambrosio, the monk who falls in love with a cross-dressing novice monk, there's Agnes the nun who has fallen in love with a man (who in turn was almost killed at a bandit's cottage in the woods) and wants to escape the convent, and there's Lorenzo the cavalier who meets a young woman named Antonia. The author was ahead of his time, because the fairytale-like story is much more captivating than any other old, old novel I've ever read. It's an easy read, but swell nonetheless.
Rating: 5
Summary: The monk
Comment: a delightfully horrific, goth masterpiece that every twisted mind should own.
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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 Press Pub. Date: July, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin, Douglas Grant, Chris Baldick ISBN: 0192835920 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story (Oxford World's Classics) by Horace Walpole, Lewis. W. S., E. J. Clery, W. S. Lewis ISBN: 0192834401 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents: A Romance (Oxford World's Classics) by Ann Radcliffe, Frederick Garber, E. J. Clery ISBN: 0192832549 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Three Gothic Novels by E. F. Bleiler, William Beckford, Horace Walpole ISBN: 0486212327 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 June, 1966 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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