Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'The Monk by Matthew Lewis'

The purpose of this thesis is to determine how guilt and shame act as engines of social control in two Gothic narratives of the 1790s, how they tie into the terror and horror modes of the genre, and how they give rise to two distinct narrative models, one centered on punishment and the other on rehabilitation. The premise of the paper is that both Matthew G. Lewis's The Monk and Ann Radcliffe's The Italian harness radically different emotional responses, one that demands the punishment of the aberrant individual and the other that reveres the reformative power of domestic felicity. The purposes of both responses are to civilize readers and their respective representations of the Holy Office of the Inquisition are central to this process. I examine the role of the Inquisition in The Monk and contrast it with the depiction of the same institution in The Italian. Lewis's book subordinates the ecclesiastical world to the authority of the aristocracy and uses graphic scenes of torture to support conservative forms of social control based on shame. The Italian, on the other hand, depicted the Inquisition as a conspiratorial body that causes Radcliffe's protagonists, and by extension her readers, to question their complicity in oppressive systems of social control and look for alternative means to punishment. The result is a push toward rehabilitation that is socially progressive but questions the English Enlightenment's promotion of the carceral.
M.A.
Department of English
Arts and Humanities
English MA

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Bachelors
Arts and Humanities
English Literature

Gothic literature has a tradition of dealing with dark subjects, themes and motifs, as well as depicting fear in different shapes and forms. Dani Cavallaro describes dark fiction in terms of the "aesthetic of the unwelcome". The philosopher Edmund Burke separates the beautiful from the sublime and writes that everything that is capable of producing a terror of pain and death is a source of the sublime. In her essay "On the Supernatural in Poetry", Ann Radcliffe draws a clear line between the concepts of terror and horror and distinguished them as fundamentally different. In this essay, I define the terms horror and terror by following up the research surrounding Radcliffes statement. I begin with the concept of terror that Burke and other writers define as an elevated and positive feeling, then move on to account for the discussion surrounding Matthew Lewis' novel The Monk. It was considered pornographic, lewd and outright dangerous in its obscenity with blatant depictions of violence, gore and sex. Since Radcliffe and Lewis were contemporary I reckon that it is profitable to explore this tension further in my essay. From Radcliffe and Lewis I find out how the concepts of terror and horror have developed with time and how modern theorists conceive this distinction.

Dans les Alice et Peter Pan, Lewis Carroll et James Matthew Barrie reconstituent leur objet de désir, étudient le corps en métamorphose, le développement du monstrueux, jusqu’à l’altération des enveloppes corporelles de leurs enfants rêvés qui se fragmentent et créent des doubles. Les auteurs, mus par leur désir de soumission, imposent au lecteur une vision unique de leurs œuvres, manipulent le héros en tentant de diriger la progression de sa vie et en mettant inlassablement en scène sa mort. Alice et Peter s’évertuent à accéder à l’incorporel pour oublier matérialité et mortalité, et leurs créateurs les dotent de traits androgynes pour nier leur sexualité et retrouver le reflet d’eux-mêmes dans ces êtres. Leur corps apparaît malgré tout comme le siège de sensations charnelles et s’expose au regard d’un observateur amoureux et voyeur qui s’interroge sur la limite qu’il doit s’imposer dans son fantasme de fusion avec son objet de désir
In the Alices and Peter Pan, Lewis Carroll and James Matthew Barrie form their object of desire, study the body being metamorphosed, the development of monstrosity, up to the distortion of the frames of their dream children who fragment and create doubles. The authors, driven by their will to subject someone, force a unique vision of their works on the reader, manipulate the main protagonist by attempting to direct the progress of his life and to ceaselessly stage his death. Alice and Peter try to become incorporeal in order to forget materiality and mortality; and their creators endow them with androgynous features to deny their sexuality and to find in these beings their own reflection. Nevertheless, their bodies appear as the centre of carnal sensations and expose themselves to the gaze of a loving and voyeuristic observer who wonders about the limit he has to set himself while fantasizing about his fusion with his object of desire

The view that Gothic literature emerged as a reaction against the prominence of the Greek classics, and that, as a result, it bears no trace of their influence, is a commonplace in Gothic studies. This thesis re-examines this view, arguing that the Gothic and the Classical were not in opposition to one another, and that Greek tragic poetry and myth should be counted among the literary sources that inspired early Gothic writers. The discussion is organised in three parts. Part I focuses on evidence which suggests that the Gothic and the Hellenic were closely associated in the minds of several British literati both on a political and aesthetic level. As is shown, the coincidence of the Hellenic with the Gothic revival in the second half of the eighteenth century inspired them not only to trace common ground between the Greek and Gothic traditions, but also to look at Greek tragic poetry and myth through Gothic eyes, bringing to light an unruly, ‘Dionysian’ world that suited their taste. The particulars of this coincidence, which has not thus far been discussed in Gothic studies, as well as evidence which suggests that several early Gothic writers were influenced by Greek tragedy and myth, open up new avenues for research on the thematic and aesthetic heterogeneity of early Gothic literature. Parts II and III set out to explore this new ground and to support the main argument of this thesis by examining the influence of Greek tragic poetry and myth on the works of two early Gothic novelists and, in many ways, shapers of the genre, William Beckford and Matthew Gregory Lewis. Part II focuses on William Beckford’s Vathek and its indebtedness to Euripides’s Bacchae, and Part III on Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk and its indebtedness to Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus. As is discussed, Beckford and Lewis participated actively in both the Gothic and Hellenic revivals, producing highly imaginative works that blended material from the British and Greek literary traditions.

El propósito de esta disertación doctoral es lo de investigar y comprender de mejor manera las influencias múltiples que, juntas al desarrollo y a la divulgación de la traducción literaria (puestas de relieve por Stuart Gillespie y David Hopkins), tuvieron un papel importante en el ascenso de las primeras novelas góticas al final del siglo dieciocho. Considerando que este trabajo está profundamente influenciado e inspirado por la crítica literaria reconocida a nivel internacional sobre la literatura gótica, esta investigación evita asumir perspectivas criticas típicas del siglo veinte y del periodo actual. Procediendo atrás en el tiempo, examina los autores, su ambiente cultural, sus conocimientos y sus puntos de vista que pertenecen al siglo dieciocho. El enfoque se concentra sobre las primeras manifestaciones del género gótico en las décadas inmediatamente sucesivas a la novedad introducida por Horace Walpole con su novela fantástica El Castillo de Otranto en 1764. El periodo fin de siècle limitado (1786-1796) de los primeros trabajos góticos que se explora en esta tesis es inversamente proporcional al ancho nivel de creatividad e invención de sus autores. Esta disertación tiene como objetivo lo de demonstrar que la omnipresencia y la reiteración de temas y argumentos clásicos, medievales y renacentistas fueron elegidos y adaptados a sus historias conscientemente por William Beckford (Vathek, 1786), Ann Radcliffe (El Romance de la Selva, 1791), y Matthew G. Lewis (El Monje, 1796), cuyas novelas representan un sincretismo único y original de ideas e influencias literarias, culturales e iconográficas que los tres autores absorbieron de sus contemporáneos así como de los escritores y poetas del pasado. Las tres novelas analizadas en esta tesis fueron escritas antes, durante y después de la revolución francesa que ha sido frecuentemente considerada como un punto de referencia y el origen de la literatura gótica. Una de las ideas detrás de esta disertación es la intención de demonstrar que las conexiones con la revolución en Francia son una convención crítica a quo, que generalmente no toma en consideración peculiaridades del gótico literario que existían antes de los acontecimientos revolucionarios. Otros aspectos importantes incluidos en esta investigación son la función de las arquitecturas, los paisajes y las iconografías de las novelas. La disertación está dividida en cinco partes. La primera introduce los argumentos and la razón de ser a la base de esta investigación junto a la motivación de organizar un estudio sobre el gótico que recibe mucha atención crítica. El cuerpo central es formado por tres capítulos. Cada uno contiene un análisis de una novela diferente y pone en evidencia su relación con autores como Lucrecio, Virgilio, Ovidio, Dante, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, y otros. El quinto capítulo incluye la conclusión y las hipótesis de investigaciones futuras que pueden desarrollarse de este estudio. Una particularidad de la bibliografía es que presenta una variedad de textos y traducciones que eran conocidos por los autores examinados en esta disertación. El idioma de los novelistas góticos reflejaba inevitablemente los estilos de los autores del pasado. Un anexo iconográfico al final de la disertación presenta una galería de pinturas e imágenes que muestran una analogía relevante con la belleza, el misterio y el terror del gótico.
The purpose of this doctoral dissertation is to investigate and better understand the multiple influences that, together with the development and spreading of literary translations (highlighted by Stuart Gillespie and David Hopkins), played an important role in the rise of the early Gothic novel at the end of the eighteenth century. While deeply inspired by and imbued with internationally recognised critical literature of the Gothic, this study avoids assuming the critical stances of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It proceeds backward in time, scrutinizing the authors, their cultural background, their knowledge, and their eighteenth-century perspectives. The focus is concentrated on the first manifestations of the Gothic genre in the decades that followed the novelty introduced by Horace Walpole with The Castle of Otranto in 1764. The restricted fin de siècle timespan (1786-1796) of the early Gothic works that is explored in this thesis is inversely proportional to the high level of creativity and inventiveness of their authors. This dissertation aims at demonstrating that the pervasiveness and reiteration of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance themes were consciously chosen and adapted to their plots by William Beckford (Vathek, 1786), Ann Radcliffe (The Romance of the Forest, 1791), and Matthew G. Lewis (The Monk, 1796), whose novels were an interesting and unusual syncretism of literary, cultural, and iconographic ideas and resources that they absorbed both from their contemporaries and, most importantly, from authors of the past. The three novels analysed in this thesis were written before, during, and after the French Revolution, which has been taken by many as a point of reference for and as a cause of the Gothic. The aim of this study is also to demonstrate that the association with the French Revolution is a critical convention a quo, which does not take into consideration Gothic peculiarities that already existed before the dramatic events in France. Other important aspects included in this investigation are the function of architectures, landscapes and iconographies in the novels. The dissertation is divided into five parts. The first part introduces the major themes and the rationale behind this investigation together with the motivation for embarking on a study on the Gothic. The central body is represented by three chapters. Every chapter analyses one novel and underscores its connection with authors such as Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, and many others. The fifth chapter contains the conclusion and the future hypotheses of investigation brought about by this research. The bibliography features a variety of source texts and translations that were known to the novelists examined in this dissertation. The three Gothic writers’ language inevitably reflected and echoed themes and styles inherited from authors of different epochs. An iconography annex introduces a series of paintings and images that showed relevant associations with Gothic beauty, mystery, and horror.

Cette thèse intitulée « Géographies de l’'enfance dans Alice's Adventures in Wonderland [1865] de Lewis Carroll, Le Avventure di Pinocchio [1883] de Carlo Collodi, Peter Pan [1911] de James Matthew Barrie et Le Petit Prince [1943] d'Antoine de Saint-Exupéry » s'intéresse, à partir d'une étude sur le traitement spatial, aux notions d'espace, de lieu et de monde de l’'enfance. Il s’'agit en effet d'aborder ces quatre ouvrages de littérature enfantine, non pas sous l'angle du personnage, mais sur la relation entre la géographie mise en place dans la narration et leur succès visible encore aujourd’hui. Si la rêverie de l’'enfance semble être au centre de la formation de mondes, c’'est sa matérialisation spatiale impromptue et éphémère qu'il faut retenir comme créatrice de lieux mythiques. En confrontant l'illusion enfantine, la relation entre espaces fantastique et espace merveilleux, la spatialisation des désirs enfantins et la dématérialisation de territoires par le souvenir et le conte, les hypothèses formulées dans cette thèse s’inscrivent dans les études sur les littératures de l'imaginaire et placent la spatialisation d’'une rêverie vers l'enfance au centre du propos
Entitled « Childhood's Geographies in Alice'sAdventures in Wonderland [1865] by Lewis Carroll, Le Avventure di Pinocchio [1883] by Carlo Collodi, Peter Pan [1911] by James Matthew Barrie and Le Petit Prince [1943] by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry », this thesis investigates the concepts of space, place, and the world of childhood, by focusing on the treatment of space. We approach these four works in children's literature, not from the perspective of the character, but rather from that of the relationship between the geography developed through the narration, and the enduring popularity of the works. Although childhood fancy seems to be at the principle of the creation of worlds, the ephemeral materialization in space can be named the force behind the elaboration of mythical places. By putting in relation such notions as the children's illusion, the space of the fantastic, the space of the marvelous, the spatialization of children's desire and the de-materialization of territory by memory and tale, the hypotheses formulated in this thesis find their place among the studies on fantasy literature, and put the spatialization of fancy at the core of the discussion

In recent years, Gothic literary studies have increasingly acknowledged the role played by Shakespeare in authorial acts of appropriation. Such acknowledgement is most prominently stated in Gothic Shakespeares (eds. Drakakis and Townshend, 2008) and Shakespearean Gothic (eds. Desmet and Williams, 2009), both of which base their analyses of the Shakespeare-Gothic intersection on the premise that Shakespearean quotations, characters and events are valuable objects in their own right which mediate on behalf of the 'present' concerns of the agents of textual appropriation. In light of this scholarship, this thesis argues the case for the presence of 'Gothic Shakespeare' in Gothic writing during the latter half of the eighteenth century and, in doing so, it acknowledges the conceptual gap whereby literary borrowings were often denounced as acts of plagiarism. Despite this conceptual problem, it is possible to trace distinct 'Gothic' Shakespeares that dismantle the concept of Shakespeare as a singular ineffable genius by virtue of a textual practice that challenges the concept of the 'genius' Shakespeare as the figurehead of genuine emotion and textual authenticity. This thesis begins by acknowledging the eighteenth-century provenance of Shakespeare's 'Genius', thereby distinguishing between the malevolent barbarian Gothic of Shakespeare's own time and the eighteenth-century Gothic Shakespeares discussed under the term 'appropriation'. It proceeds to examine the Shakespeares of canonical Gothic writers (Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis) as well as their lesser-known contemporaries (T.J. Horsley Curties and W.H. Ireland). For instance, Walpole conscripts Hamlet in order to mediate his experience of living in England after the death of his father, the first Prime Minister Robert Walpole. The thesis then argues for the centrality of Shakespeare in the Gothic romance's undercutting of the emergent discourses of emotion (or 'passion'), as represented by the fictions of Radcliffe and Lewis, before moving on to consider Curties's attempted recuperation - in Ethelwina; or, the House of Fitz-Auburne (1799) - of authentic passion, which is mediated through the authenticity apparatus of Edmond Malone's 1790 editions of Shakespeare's plays. It concludes with W.H. Ireland's dismantling of Malone's ceoncept of the 'authentic' Shakespeare through the contemporary transgressions of literary forgery and the evocation of an illicit Shakespeare in his first Gothic romance, The Abbess, also published in 1799.

Scholars and storytellers alike have deemed George MacDonald a great mythopoeic writer, an exemplar of the art. Examination of this accolade by those who first applied it to him proves it profoundly theological: for them a mythopoeic tale was a relational medium through which transformation might occur, transcending boundaries of time and space. The implications challenge much contemporary critical study of MacDonald, for they demand that his literary life and his theological life cannot be divorced if either is to be adequately assessed. Yet they prove consistent with the critical methodology MacDonald himself models and promotes. Utilizing MacDonald’s relational methodology evinces his intentional facilitating of Mythopoesis. It also reveals how oversights have impeded critical readings both of MacDonald’s writing and of his character. It evokes a redressing of MacDonald’s relationship with his Scottish cultural, theological, and familial environment – of how his writing is a response that rises out of these, rather than, as has so often been asserted, a mere reaction against them. Consequently it becomes evident that key relationships, both literary and personal, have been neglected in MacDonald scholarship – relationships that confirm MacDonald’s convictions and inform his writing, and the examination of which restores his identity as a literature scholar. Of particular relational import in this reassessment is A.J. Scott, a Scottish visionary intentionally chosen by MacDonald to mentor him in a holistic Weltanschauung. Little has been written on Scott, yet not only was he MacDonald’s prime influence in adulthood, but he forged the literary vocation that became MacDonald’s own. Previously unexamined personal and textual engagement with John Ruskin enables entirely new readings of standard MacDonald texts, as does the textual engagement with Matthew Arnold and F.D. Maurice. These close readings, informed by the established context, demonstrate MacDonald’s emergence, practice, and intent as a mythopoeic writer.

碩士
國立成功大學
外國語文學系碩博士班
92
Abstract 　　Matthew Lewis’s The Monk focuses on the process of Ambrosio’s moral and sexual fall from a holy saint of Madrid to an outrageous criminal. Among the causes of his rapid corruption, the conflict between the continent life of religion and human instinctual sexual desire is the main one. Because of the seclusion from the world outside the monastery and the Catholic idolatry, in Ambrosio’s world, there is only one type of femininity which he regards as true and acceptable, that is, the ideal type of the sacred Virgin Mary. Hence, the Virgin Mary naturally becomes the archetype or the object of his desire. It is this sexualizaion of the sacred as well as the idealization of femininity that causes Ambrosio’s final perdition. 　　Taking Ambrosio as an example, Lewis actually means to advocate a moderatism philosophy. The repression of desire imposed by oppressive institutions on individuals is as destructive as the unbridled release of excessive passion. In this sense, the French Revolution, which happened also in the boom times of Gothic novels at the end of eighteenth century, was usually associated with the main concern of the contemporary Gothic writing. Therefore, revolutionary forces against clericalism and corrupt social institutions and systems as well as their consequent excess and violence are often allegorized through the Gothic novels. 　　Moreover, through the representation of female sexuality in The Monk, Lewis also puts emphasis on the value of tradition and thinks it necessary to compromise individual pursuit for happiness with social and moral regulations. Indeed, it’s the social order and hierarchy that Lewis supports but they are the order and hierarchy with some reformation and modification after the negotiation with rebellious forces and individual struggles. 　　At last, in terms of the publication of The Monk and its reception, we can also see the conflict between the writer’s individual freedom and public moral concerns. Under a strict censorship, Lewis was demanded by the government to expurgate some “immoral” passages in case it should pollute the reader’s mind. As a result, not only Lewis’s characters in the book but also himself had to face the dilemma how to reconcile personal desires with social expectations or whether to recklessly pursue the self integrity even at the expense of moral values and conventions. He reconciled eventually and had the following editions published with the expurgation of the immoral paragraphs. However, some critics point out that the action is just a cynical gesture or compromise while Lewis in fact quite enjoyed being called Monk Lewis, which, of course, is in association with its putative obscene book, The Monk.

碩士
國立政治大學
英國語文學系
107
A door is a common object in daily life, so much so that its significance is not immediately obvious to us. This probably explains why, as far as I know, no scholars of Gothic fiction have ever scrutinised the role doors play in Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, even though this novel obsessively draws readers’ attention to them. This dissertation seeks to rectify this critical oversight and to explain why we need to pay attention to doors in The Monk. The first chapter of this dissertation explores the issues of boundaries and control that the existence of a door necessarily brings about. I use the examples of Elvira’s door and the door of the church of Capuchins to show how protection can shade into tyranny. Chapter two tries to revise Mark Madoff’s view that spaces in Gothic novels tend to fall into two distinct categories: the inside and the outside. Examining the acts of opening and closing doors in The Monk, I show how the strict spatial dichotomy that Madoff proposes does not stand in Lewis’s text. Chapter three asks what happens when the decisions to open/close and to leave/enter a door become controversial. I argue that in The Monk, these controversial decisions are often complicated further by the power struggle between men and women. The drama of gender dynamics and self-determination depend largely on doors.

碩士
國立中正大學
外國語文研究所
101
The Gothic novel is traditionally considered to be a genre of literature that combines elements of horror and romance. The reader expects to meet characters like demons, villains, bandits, or some supernatural events as s/he reads a Gothic novel. Labeled as a Gothic masterpiece, Matthew G. Lewis’s The Monk has long been regarded as a novel filled with supernatural events, graphic violence, vivid sexuality, and necromancy. In addition to these Gothic attributes, some ideologies in fact are deeply embedded in the novel. Ambrosio’s downfall reveals anti-Catholic ideology while the three female characters’ sexual transgression and revengeful violence demonstrate anti-patriarchal ideology, proving that some ideologies definitely penetrate into the fictional society in the novel. In this thesis, Chapter One focuses on discussion of the term Gothic, the Gothic novel, and Matthew G. Lewis’s The Monk. Chapter Two investigates how Ideology, the Repressive State Apparatus (SA), and the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) work in the novel. Chapter Three explicates religion as ideology, especially anti-Catholic ideology displayed through the behaviors of Ambrosio, the abbess, and the nuns. Chapter Four explores the sexual transgression and revengeful violence of three women—Matilda, Beatrice, and Marguerite—to demonstrate how powerful anti-patriarchal ideology is. From Ambrosio’s downfall to other rebellious characters’ behaviors, the reader can delve into the embedded ideologies to see another façade which the novel attempts to reveal, aside from barbarous violence, lewd promiscuousness, or supernatural phenomenon of a typical Gothic novel.

碩士
國立彰化師範大學
英語學系
102
Abstract This thesis, The Line of Flight of a Desiring Machine: the Schizoanalysis of Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, maintains that the author of The Monk, M. G. Lewis, belongs to the Nietzschian cultural physicians, who offer an alternative insight to the world. In the late 18th century, including Lewis, a bunch of Gothic novel writers can be regarded as the contemporary cultural physicians, who contradict the rationality dominated classicism in their own ways, and cope with the omnipresent ideological domination, which defines normalcy and Oedipalizes the dominated, the oppressed, and the conformists into the docile bodies. Lewis is one of the cultural physicians and pursues his line of flight to reach beyond the restrictions of his time through Ambrosio, the protagonist in his novel. Through Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalysis, Ambrosio becomes a desiring machine, and readers get to investigate how the desire of Ambrosio works and helps to achieve his deterritorialization. However, whether Ambrosio follows the line of flight and deterritoriates or not is not of the utmost consequence. Deterritorialization is a process to break through the Oedipalization, and an awareness of the fascistic influence. The schizoanalysis of Ambrosio provides us a model who tries to flight from the Oedipalization in order to become a schizophrenic, but eventually pays his price. To see Ambrosio’s journey in a different light would mean for one to step on the Open Road themselves, following the disconcerting trajectory of schizoanalytic understanding: an understanding awake to the miseries of territorialization but yet painfully unclear over how to find the path to freedom.