Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I TECHNIQUES OF GHOST-SEEING
- PART II THE BUSINESS OF ROMANCE
- 3 The advantages of history
- 4 Back to the future
- 5 The value of the supernatural in a commercial society
- PART III THE STRANGE LUXURY OF ARTIFICIAL TERROR
- PART IV MAGICO-POLITICAL TALES
- Afterword
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM
3 - The advantages of history
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I TECHNIQUES OF GHOST-SEEING
- PART II THE BUSINESS OF ROMANCE
- 3 The advantages of history
- 4 Back to the future
- 5 The value of the supernatural in a commercial society
- PART III THE STRANGE LUXURY OF ARTIFICIAL TERROR
- PART IV MAGICO-POLITICAL TALES
- Afterword
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM
Summary
EXEMPLARY HISTORICISM
In February 1765 the Monthly Review recommended The Castle of Otranto to its readers, promising ‘considerable entertainment’ to those ‘who can digest the absurdities of Gothic fiction, and bear with the machinery of ghosts and goblins … for it is written with no common pen; the language is accurate and elegant, the characters are highly finished; and the disquisitions into human manners, passions and pursuits, indicate the keenest penetration, the most perfect knowledge of mankind’.
But in a later issue the Monthly Review was forced to revise its verdict:
While we considered [The Castle of Otranto a translation] we could readily excuse its preposterous phenomena, and consider them as sacrifices to a gross and unenlightened age. – But when, as in this edition, [it] is declared to be a modern performance, that indulgence we offered to the foibles of a supposed antiquity, we can by no means extend to the singularity of a false tale in a cultivated period of learning. It is, indeed, more than strange that an Author, of a refined and polished genius, should be an advocate for re-establishing the barbarous superstitions of Gothic devilism! Incredulus odi, is, or ought to be a charm against all such infatuation.
Three months divided the two judgements. The cause of this turnaround was the appearance in the interim of a second edition of the book including a new preface, signed with the initials ‘H. W.’. The Castle of Otranto was revealed to be a modern scandal rather than an ancient curiosity, a sinister hoax rather than a naive genuine article.
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- The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 1762–1800 , pp. 53 - 67Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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