You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.06 AVERAGE
3.06 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Simple but effective Gothic horror. A halfway house between a Quixotic knightly fantasy and modern horror. I'd love to read it as a comic.
Lectura obligatoria de letterature Comparate.
Primera obra del género gótico —> elemento principal: castillo(escenario tétrico, que alberga diferentes estancias, pasadizos, sitios oscuros; representando la psique humana.
El Gótico surge con los bárbaros en Alemania (creo) pero toma auge en este periodo como respuesta a la crisis de lo sacro.
Walpole aqui, combina elementos reales (personajes que aportan verosimilitud) con elementos ficticios (Corrado muere porq le cae una armadura medieval del cielo); esto aporta cierto desconcierto. Este elemento, según Auerbach, es novedoso y crea contradiccion en el lector.
La obra está basada en Otranto (Ciudad encontrada en Puglia, Italia).
Me interesa el contexto y me hace ilu haberme leído y estudiado esta obra por la importancia q tiene en la literatura, pero, como obra… me ha resultado un poco aburrida, muy ambientada en lo medieval (meh) y ns no me la volvería a leer.
Primera obra del género gótico —> elemento principal: castillo(escenario tétrico, que alberga diferentes estancias, pasadizos, sitios oscuros; representando la psique humana.
El Gótico surge con los bárbaros en Alemania (creo) pero toma auge en este periodo como respuesta a la crisis de lo sacro.
Walpole aqui, combina elementos reales (personajes que aportan verosimilitud) con elementos ficticios (Corrado muere porq le cae una armadura medieval del cielo); esto aporta cierto desconcierto. Este elemento, según Auerbach, es novedoso y crea contradiccion en el lector.
La obra está basada en Otranto (Ciudad encontrada en Puglia, Italia).
Me interesa el contexto y me hace ilu haberme leído y estudiado esta obra por la importancia q tiene en la literatura, pero, como obra… me ha resultado un poco aburrida, muy ambientada en lo medieval (meh) y ns no me la volvería a leer.
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
dark
funny
informative
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
3 stars
The granddaddy of all gothic novels. This novel was published in 1764 and is considered to be the first gothic novel ever written, so of course I had to read it as a lover of the genre. I could see a lot in this novel that influenced the books that came after in the genre, the eerie castle, the forced marriage, the fleeing heroine, haunted caves, ghosts and talking corpses, the secret passages, the moving portraits, etc.
The first chapter had me hooked, it was some good drama. The novel started with a really shitty wedding day for poor Isabell. She has to marry a man she had no interest in (but at least he was around her age) for political relations, but he mysteriously got crushed to death by a giant helmet. The ruler his elderly dad decided he wanted to divorce his “barren” wife and marry poor Isabel instead to further is bloodline. So she obviously runs in terror at the idea of marrying him. And from there we meet an array of other characters would get pulled into the drama.
Something that made the novel hard for me to follow/enjoy at times was the writing style. There were not many paragraph breaks and the dialog ran together, so for me it was unclear who was talking when.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
dark
emotional
funny
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This is the original Gothic novel, and it's darned entertaining, much more so than I found Mrs. Radcliffe's [b:The Mysteries of Udolpho|93134|The Mysteries of Udolpho|Ann Radcliffe|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171252660s/93134.jpg|3253891]. Okay, maybe Walpole didn't exactly mean (most of the time) to make the reader laugh, but who could help it, faced with enormous people-crushing black helmets ("an hundred times more large than any casque ever made for human being, and shaded with a proportionable quantity of black feathers"), family curses, bleeding statues, telltale birthmarks, ghostly sighs, and all the rest? The characters are fairly one-dimensional (except perhaps for Manfred, the villain of the piece), but the fast pace and amazing events make Otranto what the late lamented Common Reader would have called "a Thumping Good Read".