| Article Details : |
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| | | Article Name : | | | Infernal Imagery: Dante in William Beckford’s
Vathek and Matthew G. Lewis’s The Monk
| | Author Name : | | | MARIA TERESA MARNIERI, PhD
| | Publisher : | | | Bridge Center | | Article URL : |  | | | Abstract : | | | The early Gothic novels published in the last decades of the
eighteenth century contributed to the creation of new imagery forms
and a rich variety of iconographies that were both appreciated and
rejected by contemporary critics and readers. Interestingly, the Gothic
literary production of the period was a result of the cultural crossover
of a variety of literary influences from different authors and epochs.
This research looks at the controversial and ambiguous novels Vathek
by William Beckford (1786) and The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis
(1796) as examples of rich cultural substrata. Beckford and Lewis’s
works feature dramatic situations that are still shocking and
appalling even for a modern public. The texts are complex and mingle
multiple sources and influences, creating a pastiche effect inherited
from Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764). A vast critical
literature has been published on both authors’ strange novels
providing various interpretations and identifying possible models for
their works. However, lesser attention has been dedicated to medieval
inspiration and to examples by Dante. Following the ideas expressed
by Diego Saglia (2006), who convincingly argues that Gothic
overtones were found in the most popular narratives of the Inferno,
the aim of this study is to demonstrate how Dante’s Inferno played a
major role in the creation of both novels’ gory and dramatic finales.
This study intends to highlight the Dantesque factor in the
development of the most crucial parts of the novels and how influences
from Italian Trecento still had a very important role in poetic and
literary production at the end of the Eighteenth Century | | Keywords : | | | Early Gothic literature, Eighteenth Century literature,
Medieval Literature, Dantes Comedy, William Beckford, Matthew
Lewis, comparative literatures
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