Melmoth the Wanderer

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Maturin ◽  
Chris Baldick
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Gothic Novel ◽  
Spanish Inquisition ◽  
The Devil ◽  
The Wanderer

abstract Written by an eccentric Anglican curate, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) brought the terrors of the Gothic novel to a new fever pitch of intensity. Its tormented villain seeks a victim to release from his fatal pact with the devil, and Maturin’s bizarre narrative structure whirls the reader from rural Ireland to an idyllic Indian island, from a London madhouse to the dungeons of the Spanish inquisition.

The Devil in the Slum: American Urban Gothic

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Loman
Keyword(s):  
Gothic Novel ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
City Mysteries ◽  
The Devil

This chapter focuses on the emergence of American urban gothic in literature of the late Antebellum. From roughly 1840 to 1860 a community of writers organized an extant urban gothic vocabulary into a popular and influential subgenre, city-mysteries, which ostentatiously announced their link to the gothic novel. These mysteries were intimately intertwined with urban reportage of the so-called ‘flash press’ among other art forms, especially the stage.

Indecent Theology: Sex and Female Heresy in Counter-Reformation Spain

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 866-896
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Misconduct ◽  
Spanish Inquisition ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Illiterate Woman ◽  
The Devil

In 1636, the Spanish Inquisition tried María de la Cruz for heresy and having made a pact with the devil. Examination of her trial in light of information about sexual misconduct on the part of Catholic clerics, however, reveals that what drove María to the emotional and behavioral extremes that her accusers described was neither heresy nor the devil the authorities had in mind. Theologians who evaluated her case and also met with María discerned what those who only read the accusations against her were unable to know: María's devils were human men taking advantage of a poor, illiterate woman for sex.

‘The Devil Era’: The Presence of Éamon de Valera in Three Novels by Kate O'Brien

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-126
Author(s):  
Anthony Roche
Keyword(s):  
Historical Novel ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Critical Measure ◽  
Public Character ◽  
Kate O'brien ◽  
The Devil ◽  
The Wanderer

This essay argues that Kate O'Brien's novels set in a contemporary Ireland engage directly with the political and public character of that society. O'Brien focusses her critique on Eamon de Valera, Taoiseach from 1932 on. Pray for the Wanderer (1938) directly responds to the 1937 Constitution and its relegation of women to the home. The Last of Summer (1943) is set just before World War Two and takes critical measure of the political and cultural isolationism dominant in Ireland by the end of the 1930s. In O'Brien's historical novel That Lady (1946), King Philip II of Spain is a thinly veiled portrait of de Valera, aging and conservative, confining the spirited woman who challenges him to incarceration within her home.

scholarly journals Rethinking Love as Passion: Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate

Literature ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-57
Author(s):  
Geoff M. Boucher
Keyword(s):  
Romantic Love ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Political ◽  
Love Stories ◽  
Gothic Novel ◽  
The Devil

Jeanette Winterson’s magical realist love stories, such as The Passion, have been read by some critics in terms of a tendency to idealise romance as a transformative passion that transcends social structures. In this article, I propose that Winterson’s recent gothic novel, The Daylight Gate, critically revises a set of Romantic themes first broached in The Passion, exposing and interrogating the fantasy scenario at the centre of romantic love. This narrative about magic and the devil explores the ambivalence of passion as possession—diabolical and contractual—before using this to critique the desire for transcendence implied by “undying love”. Metaphysics becomes a metaphor for metapsychology, where the Romantic motif of undying love as connected to fatal desire is complicated by a traversal of the fantasy of the union of two immortal souls. These revisions have the effect of reversing the implications of Winterson’s earlier treatment of romantic love, turning it back from the personal towards engagement with the political.

“I will tell, I will tell”

2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen L. Doty ◽  
Risto Hiltunen
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Structure And Function ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Direct Discourse ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Question And Answer ◽  
Narrative Patterns ◽  
And Function ◽  
Sociohistorical Context ◽  
The Devil

This study focuses on the records of confessions by individuals accused of witchcraft in Salem in 1692, both those presented in direct discourse and in reported discourse. We analyze the material from two viewpoints: the pragmatic features of the discourse and narrative structure and function. The data consists of 29 individual records, with eight cases selected for closer scrutiny. The records span the period from March through September 1692. In the pragmatic analysis we study the question and answer patterns from the point of view of the examiners and the accused. The analysis of narrative patterns is based on Labov’s work in oral narratives. It provides a multilayered approach to understanding both the structure of the confessions and the spread of the witchcraft hysteria in Salem. The categories of orientation and complicating action reveal that each confession presents a vivid representation of the devil, the accused, and the sociohistorical context.

scholarly journals Desire as The Harbinger of Good and Evil in Matthew Lewis’s ‘The Monk’

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Dr. Aradhana Mukherjee
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Gothic Novel ◽  
Good And Evil

Desire is a feeling which gives different shades and hues to a human being’s personality. It transforms him either as good or bad depending upon how much can a person cope up with his or her feelings. Mathew Lewis’s Gothic novel or rather a  thriller ‘The Monk’ is a blend of desire  with the narrative structure which has been appreciated by both the readers and the critic regarding the skilful handling of the theme by the author. This has been seconded by Theodore, the personal servant of the protagonist, Raymond in the following lines: “Authorship  is a mania to conquer which no reasons are sufficiently strong; and you might as easily persuade me not to love, as I persuade you not to write.” [Lewis  204.]

scholarly journals The Paradox of Context

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
László Iliásics
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Retrospective View ◽  
New Religion ◽  
The Wanderer

The aim of this paper is to resolve the paradoxical nature of the juxtaposition of Germanic pagan with Christian teachings and ideas in Old English elegies. First, the most relevant notions of religious encounter are discussed. Then, the notion of 'Wyrd,' the Germanic fate motif, shall be introduced. Subsequently, after giving a concise summary of the history and story of The Wanderer and The Seafarer, the paper deals with the narrative structure of each, then analysing their relevant parts in depth. The paper also elaborates on the phenomenon of 'progression.' The word is here used to refer to the shift in tone (from earthly to transcendent) which occurs to emphasise the importance of the new religion and is achieved by presenting Christian teachings as consolation for the exiled protagonists. In The Wanderer, the pagan retrospective view is exchanged for the eschatological, while in The Seafarer the development from a lament to sermon is what will be the means of this consolation.

The devil and William Dabney. An epidemiological postscript

JAMA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 195 (8) ◽  
pp. 645-648
Author(s):  
F. J. Spencer
Keyword(s):  
The Devil
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