For Monday: Early Reviews of The Castle of Otranto

The Afterlife of Otranto: Read “Sir Walter Scott’s Introduction” (pp.3-15)

Answer TWO of the following…

1. Many early reviews of Otranto—though initially laudatory—became critical when Walpole revealed himself as the author.  According to one review from May 1765,

“It is, indeed, strange, that an Author, of a refined and polished genius, should be an advocate for re-establishing the barbarous superstitions of Gothic devilism!...Under the same banner he attempts to defend all the trash of Shakespeare, and what that great genius evidently threw out as a necessary sacrifice to that idol, the blind multitude.” 

Based on your reading, what is this critic referring to, and what might have struck him as so “devilish” that only makes us smile today?  How might this review reflect the aesthetics of the Enlightenment which Walpole, and others, were striving to correct in their works? 

2. Sir Walter Scott, in his famous 1811 Introduction to the work, writes that “Romantic narrative is of two kinds—that which, being in itself possible may be a matter of belief at any period; and that which, though held impossible by more enlightened ages, was yet consonant with the faith of earlier times.  The subject of the Castle of Otranto is of the latter class” (10).  Why does Scott feel that only the “latter class” is worthy of Romantic narrative, and how does he compare the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe (who wrote the more famous Gothic novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho) unfavorably to Walpole? 

3. Clara Reeve, who wrote her own version of Otranto set in England, The Old English Baron (1778), criticized Walpole for his Gothic excesses.  As she writes, “the reason is so obvious, the machinery is so violent, that it destroys the effect it is intended to excite.  Had the story been kept within the utmost verge of probability, the effect had been preserved, without losing the least circumstance that excites or detains the attention.”  Do modern readers read the book like Reeve—is it too much, too improbable, too silly?  Or does her critique also reflect the prude temper of Enlightenment taste? 

4. Scott, as a Romantic writer, felt that Otranto was a seminal work that laid the foundation for much of the Romantic movement.  How does he use Otranto as a kind of historical specimen for the “change” that was in the air in the mid-18^th century?  To this end, does he think Otranto is more important as a work of literature or a work of history; in other words, should we respect it or love it?