Lewis set out to write the “ultimate” Gothic novel, and he certainly succeeded. The Monk was published when Matthew Lewis was only nineteen years old and is very much a young man’s enthusiastic and rather reckless work. So – all care taken, no responsibility accepted!
This edition of The Monk, set from the unexpurgated first edition, includes an introduction by John Berryman.Welcome, all! This time around I will be tutoring Madeline (Squeak圜hu) in Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk, from 1796.įor those of you who are planning on lurking, but who are not familiar with this novel, I feel that I should start by offering a general warning about its contents: this is a novel featuring sex and violence and horror, including several scenes that are fairly shocking and offensive even by modern standards. A true classic of the Gothic novel, it left an indelible mark on English literature and has influenced such eminent writers as Byron, Scott, Poe, Flaubert, Hawthorne, Emily Brontë, and many others. It was so controversial that the House of Commons-of which Lewis was a member-pronounced him licentious and perverse. Matthew Lewis's The Monk shocked and titillated readers with its graphic portrayal of lust, sin, and violence when it was first published in 1796. Along the way, he encounters a naïve virgin who falls prey to his scheming, a baleful beauty fluent in witchcraft, the ghostly Bleeding Nun, an evil prioress, the Wandering Jew, and Lucifer himself. Yet beneath the veneer of this religious man lies a heart of hypocrisy arrogant, licentious, and vengeful, he follows his sexual desires down the torturous path to ruin.
He is beloved by his flock, and his renowned piety has earned him the nickname The Man of Holiness.
Ambrosio is the abbot of the Capuchin monastery in Madrid. A pious monk is driven by sexual desire into the depths of sin and depravity in this eighteenth-century classic of Gothic fiction.
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