I support Manchester City, and like weekends and whisky. Please drop in and recommend a funny film f...
I support Manchester City, and like weekends and whisky. Please drop in and recommend a funny film for me to watch. Thanks.
Member since:27.01.2005
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Many readers will be put off The Monk because it is over two hundred years old but that is their loss. This is a great read which moves as quickly as any modern thriller and entrances with its lavishly poetic yet perfectly accessible style.
Ambrosio is the most highly-regarded monk in all Madrid. Peasants and noblemen alike gather in huge crowds to hear his weekly sermons and his fellow monks revere him almost like a saint. In telling the story of Ambrosio's shocking decline the author questions whether extreme religiousness is always a sign true devotion to God. There are those who proclaim themselves holy in their words or their actions who do so for the accompanying feeling of superiority over their fellows, rather than for any love of a higher being. In fact, spending all ones days in strict adherence to a religious code says nothing of a man's true moral fibre.
The monk of the title falls foul of sexual temptation early on in the story, but the road to ruin has already been determined by the pride he takes in being held in such high esteem. He does not love God (although he certainly fears His vengeance), he only loves himself. This leads him down a spiral of moral decadence that culminates in a series of unforgivable wrongdoings. The story is enriched by Lewis' natural instinct for the pace of a thriller (long before the genre was defined) and his uncommon way with the English language. At several points one has to pause and wonder at the supreme insight of the author into the human mind and the perfect use of the English language to illustrate it. This is made all the more remarkable by the fact that the whole novel was written in only ten weeks by a twenty-year-old man.
There are several stories simultaneously at work here, all of which are tinged with an inescapable atmosphere of certain doom. Lewis does not mind showing off the versatility of his literary gifts, embellishing the story with poems, songs and mini-ghost stories. He is clearly enjoying his own talent and there is so much on display here that it is impossible to blame him. The whole book is totally compelling, but Lewis excels himself with his descriptions of lust and how it completely overrules every other instinct in the title character.
The Monk is thought by many to be the first example of the gothic horror genre, and there is no doubt that it has been extremely influential; Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott were big admirers of The Monk, so authors that are influenced by those two are probably in some way also indebted to Matthew Lewis. The fact that it does not rank alongside the likes of Dracula and Frankenstein is perhaps due to the fact that Lewis never wrote any other popular fiction, or more likely is a result of the anti-religious (and particularly anti-Christian) nature of the story.
It is easy to see why The Monk created such a sensation at the time of its first publication back in 1796. Even some of today's readers may be shocked at some parts of it. What is less easy to understand is why it is not regarded in quite the same bracket as other classics of the genre. It's the best gothic novel I have ever read, better even than the marvellous Vathek.
One small note of caution: If you buy the Dover Thrift edition (very reasonably priced on Amazon) DO NOT READ THE BACK for it gives a full synopsis of the plot right up until the very last page. What on earth were Dover Thrift thinking? Their edition also has one of the ugliest cover designs I have ever seen. It's just as well that we are taught not to judge books thus.
On the plus side it is very cheap.
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Okay... you've won me over. I admit I have never heard of The Monk (shame on me), and will promptly get on my surf board and make my way to Amazon, where I will NOT look at the back cover of the book, just in case! xxx
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