The Monk
Page 44
5. Indies: refers to the East or West Indies, synonymous here with wealth and profit.
6. willow: The willow is a symbol for grief over unrequited love or the loss of a loved one.
7. “Of lonely haunts … loves!”: William Strode (1602–45), Melancholly I.12–13. The original reads, “Fountains heads, and pathlesse groves,/Places which pale Passion loves.”
8. St. Rosolia: There is a St. Rosalia, a Sicilian woman who retired from the world to live as an ascetic, first in a cave and then on Mount Pellegrino.
CHAPTER VII
1. Epigraph: Robert Blair (1699–1746), The Grave II.11–20.
2. “Amadis de Gaul”: a Spanish or Portuguese chivalric prose romance, dating from the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Don Galaor is Amadis’s brother.
3. Damsel Plazer di mi vida: a character in Tirante the White.
4. confident: confidant.
5. agnus dei: Latin, Lamb of God. a cake of wax stamped with the image of a lamb and blessed by the Pope.
6. constellated: framed under particular constellations to have certain magical properties; charmed.
VOLUME III
CHAPTER VIII
1. Epigraph: Shakespeare, Cymbeline II.ii.11–16. Tarquin is the Roman who raped Lucretia; Cytherea is another name for Venus.
2. Proteus: a sea god, capable of assuming any shape.
3. “By anthropophagi … shoulders”: Shakespeare, Othello I.iii.144–45. Othello tells Desdemona fantastic tales of his travels and adventures. Anthropophagi are cannibals.
4. Terra Incognita: Latin, land unknown.
5. Hottentot: a term applied to Africans, especially those in the region of South Africa.
6. Silesia: a region in central Europe, now in southern Poland.
7. Loretto: a well-known pilgrimage destination in Italy with a shrine to the Virgin Mary.
8. discovered by a minstrel: According to legend, the minstrel Blondel de Nesle helped rescue his patron, Richard the Lionheart, from the cell in which Leopold of Austria had imprisoned him by wandering through Germany and singing a song known only to Richard and Blondel. When Blondel heard Richard’s response, the troubadour alerted English troops to Richard’s whereabouts.
9. symphony: an instrumental prelude or introduction.
10. The Water-King: based on Der Wassermann, by the German philosopher, critic, and collector of folk songs Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803).
11. housings: cloths put on a horse for defense or decoration.
12. St. Genevieve: Patron saint of Paris, she was distinguished from an early age as a holy figure and was credited with saving the city from the invasion of Attila in the fifth century.
13. I doubt they are murderers: “Doubt” is used in the archaic sense here; the meaning is “I fear they are murderers” (not “I don’t think that they are murderers”).
CHAPTER IX
1. Epigraph: Robert Blair, The Grave 11.431–37.
2. hostess: mistress of a lodging establishment.
3. caro sposo: Italian, dear husband.
4. calendar: calendar of days dedicated to the various saints on which rituals or festivals would be observed in their honor.
5. St. James of Compostella: See Chapter I, note for
p. 17, LL. 14–15. St. James’s relics were housed in the town of Compostela, in northwestern Spain.
6. Cain: the firstborn son of Adam. Cain murdered his brother Abel, and his punishment was to wander the earth and to have no crops bear fruit for him.
7. deal: boards of fir or pine.
8. eat flesh upon Fridays: Roman Catholics were supposed to avoid eating meat on Fridays. Fish was not considered to be meat, and some argued that fowl was not meat, either.
9. gallician: a type of chicken, bred in the Spanish province of Galicia.
10. ave-maria: Latin, Hail Mary. A prayer invoking the aid of the Virgin Mary.
11. temporal: temporary.
CHAPTER X
1. Epigraph: William Cowper (1731–1800), Charity, II.254–59.
2. suppositious: imagined, fictitious.
3. St. Lucia: Sicilian martyr whose persecutions included having her eyes put out and who was miraculously able to put them back in again.
4. St. Catherine: Alexandrian martyr. She was put on a spiked wheel that was supposed to kill her, but when it broke, she was beheaded.
5. St. Genevieve: See Chapter VIII, note for p. 234, L. 30.
CHAPTER XI
1. Epigraph: Matthew Prior (1664–1721), Solomon, 525–28, 531–32, 539–44.
2. crow: crowbar.
3. men have died … love”: Shakespeare, As You Like It, IV.i.96–98: “Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”
CHAPTER XII
1. Epigraph: James Thomson (1700–1748), The Castle of Indolence, II.1xxviii.1–4.
2. the Holy Office: the Inquisition. See Chapter IV, note for p. 147, L. 35.
3. Grand Inquisitor: the director of the court of Inquisition.
4. Auto da Fé: public execution of one (or many) condemned by the Inquisition.
6. sulphurous fogs … hoarseness: John Dryden (1631–1700), King Arthur, II.i: “I had a voice in Heav’n, ere Sulph’rous Streams / Had damp’d it to a hoarseness.”
7. Sierra Morena: mountain range in Spain, south of Madrid.
Suggested Reading
Botting, Fred. Gothic. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.
Bruhm, Steven. Gothic Bodies: The Politics of Pain in Romantic Fiction. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.
Cavaliero, Glen. The Supernatural and English Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Clery, E. J. The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 1762–1800. Cambridge, England, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Conger, Syndy M. Matthew G. Lewis, Charles Robert Maturin and the Germans: An Interpretive Study of the Influence of German Literature on Two Gothic Novels. New York: Arno Press, 1980.
Frank, Frederick S., ed. Special Issue on Matthew Lewis’s The Monk. Romanticism on the Net 8 (Nov. 1997) http://www-sul.stanford.edu/mirrors/romnet/guest2.html.
Haggerty, George E. Gothic Fiction/Gothic Form. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989.
Howard, Jacqueline. Reading Gothic Fiction: A Bakhtinian Approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
Irwin, Joseph James. M. G. “Monk” Lewis. New York: Twayne, 1976.
Kilgour, Maggie. The Rise of the Gothic Novel. London and New York: Routledge, 1995.
MacDonald, David Lorne. Monk Lewis: A Critical Biography. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.
Parreaux, André. The Publication of the Monk: A Literary Event 1796–1798. Paris: M. Didier, 1960.
Peck, Louis F. A Life of Matthew G. Lewis. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1961.
Punter, David. The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fiction from 1765 to the Present Day. Revised ed. 2 vols. London and New York: Longman, 1996.
Reno, Robert Princeton. The Gothic Visions of Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Gregory Lewis. New York: Arno Press, 1980.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. The Coherence of Gothic Conventions. New York: Arno Press, 1980.
READING GROUP GUIDE
1. One of the most damning criticisms of The Monk was made by one Reverend Thomas Mathias, who called it blasphemous. Because of controversy like this, Lewis excised certain passages for the fourth and fifth editions. Mathias pointed to the passage in the first edition where Antonia reads from an expurgated Bible because the original was improper for women. Are there other instances of blasphemy in the text? What critiques of Christianity does Lewis seem to be making? How might the novel be considered anti-Catholic?
2. The main plot, concerning Ambrosio, derives from the story of Santon Barsisa, which appeared in The Guardian in 1713. The secondary plot, of Raymond and Agnes, seems to be of Lewis’s own creation. What do you believe he intended by te
lling this multifaceted tale? Why not let the story of Ambrosio stand alone? How do the two stories run parallel to each other?
3. How does Lewis reconcile religion and superstition? Consider the roles of the Bleeding Nun and the Wandering Jew.
4. What kind of position was Monk Lewis taking with respect to the social and religious establishments of the eighteenth century? Might he have been commenting on what may happen when our individual choices are taken away? Consider how this might be applicable to contemporary issues.
5. The Monk was Lewis’s only novel; he was primarily known as a playwright. Consider both the physical and structural architecture in The Monk. How might the novel be considered theatrically structured?
6. The critic Christopher Maclachlan notes that in many ways this novel presents a more positive portrayal of women’s sexuality than does other gothic fiction. Does this argument hold true for all the female characters? What deeper significance could this proto-feminism have?
7. Consider the shifting tone throughout the novel. How do these nuances affect our reading?
8. Ann Radcliffe was disgusted by The Monk and retaliated with her version of a gothic novel called The Italian, first published in 1797. Radcliffe’s novel ends on a happy note, with the lovers reuniting. This provided a stark contrast to Lewis’s ending with Ambrosio’s demonical torture. Compare these endings. Which seems to work better? Keep in mind that these works were originally known as romance novels.
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from a facsimile copy of the April 1796 edition printed for J. Bell, Oxford Street, London. This edition is considered the most authoritative, as subsequent editions were edited by Matthew Lewis to expurgate certain passages that some deemed immoral and perverse. To the greatest possible extent, oddities and inconsistencies of spelling and punctuation have been preserved.
THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD
Maya Angelou
•
Daniel J. Boorstin
•
A. S. Byatt
•
B. Caleb Carr
•
Christopher Cerf
•
Ron Chernow
•
Shelby Foote
•
Stephen Jay Gould
•
Vartan Gregorian
•
Richard Howard
•
Charles Johnson
•
Jon Krakauer
•
Edmund Morris
•
Joyce Carol Oates
•
Elaine Pagels
•
John Richardson
•
Salman Rushdie
•
Oliver Sacks
•
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
•
Carolyn See
•
William Styron
•
Gore Vidal