Take a photo of a barcode or cover
mafiabadgers 's review for:
The Castle of Otranto
by Horace Walpole
First read 10/2023, reread 07/2025
The introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition is fantastic, providing a background to the Gothic genre as a whole (the fall of Rome, classical style replaced by mediaeval, the construction of English/Whig identity in both tyranny and the resistance thereof, the veneration of melancholy) and to the book (Walpole's political career, his alteration of and love for Strawberry Hill House, the threat of losing both home and fortune). My only real critique is its dismissal of queer readings.
As for Otranto itself, I definitely enjoyed it much more the second time around. It's necessary on the one hand to abandon all experience of the genre and delight in the shadowy underground, the secret passages, the ghosts prophesying doom, and on the other hand to bypass cynicism and read it with camp delight. Since I first read it I've seen Vincent Price in The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), which is exactly the look of the thing, all cardboard and styrofoam. Price would make for a pretty good Manfred, and Theodore in the underground cloister is perfectly, exactly The Princess Bride-era Carey Elwes. The dialogue between Manfred, Jaquez, and Diego is only quite funny (and perhaps a little tiresome) on the page, but imagine it staged, with the appropriate gesturing and arm-waving, and it would be really quite funny. It's all very theatrical, and the influence of Shakespeare on the plot is plain to see. Unfortunately, my enjoyment waned as it dragged on, until by the end I was quite glad to be done with it, although I think that was mostly me. I'm glad I revisited it.
The introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition is fantastic, providing a background to the Gothic genre as a whole (the fall of Rome, classical style replaced by mediaeval, the construction of English/Whig identity in both tyranny and the resistance thereof, the veneration of melancholy) and to the book (Walpole's political career, his alteration of and love for Strawberry Hill House, the threat of losing both home and fortune). My only real critique is its dismissal of queer readings.
As for Otranto itself, I definitely enjoyed it much more the second time around. It's necessary on the one hand to abandon all experience of the genre and delight in the shadowy underground, the secret passages, the ghosts prophesying doom, and on the other hand to bypass cynicism and read it with camp delight. Since I first read it I've seen Vincent Price in The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), which is exactly the look of the thing, all cardboard and styrofoam. Price would make for a pretty good Manfred, and Theodore in the underground cloister is perfectly, exactly The Princess Bride-era Carey Elwes. The dialogue between Manfred, Jaquez, and Diego is only quite funny (and perhaps a little tiresome) on the page, but imagine it staged, with the appropriate gesturing and arm-waving, and it would be really quite funny. It's all very theatrical, and the influence of Shakespeare on the plot is plain to see. Unfortunately, my enjoyment waned as it dragged on, until by the end I was quite glad to be done with it, although I think that was mostly me. I'm glad I revisited it.