Fireside Tales: The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole is considered the first Gothic novel. It was first published on Christmas Eve 1764, in the guise of ancient manuscript, "found in the library of an ancient catholic family in the north of England" and claimed to have been printed in Naples in 1529 (though undoubtedly composed at some earlier date). Walpole kept his own identity a secret, even adopting a pseudonym for the personage of the translator of this ancient Italian work: William Marshal, Gent. Walpole went a step further with this fabricated air of authenticity, suggesting that while "the machinery is invention, and the names of the actors imaginary, I cannot but believe that the groundwork of the story is founded on truth. The scene is undoubtedly laid in some real castle."

Undoubtedly. But the castle in question was not a crumbling stronghold in southern Italy, but a villa in Twickenham on the outskirts of London called Strawberry Hill, which Walpole had purchased in 1747. Strawberry Hill was an ordinary country cottage at this point, a nice enough place, but lacking in the requisite "gloomth" to suit Walpole's tastes. He spent the next 25 years adding turrets, towers, cloisters, pointed arches, stained glass, and finials, transforming the house into a Gothic castle in miniature. Walpole now had a fitting backdrop for his eccentric antiquarian collections and his medieval imagination.

The Castle of Otranto had its dark genesis in a dream of its author, steeped as he was in this atmosphere of medieval Romance and Gothic architecture:

"I waked one morning in the beginning of last June from a dream, of which all I could recover was, that I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for a head filled like mine with Gothic story) and that on the uppermost bannister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening I sat down and began to write, without knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate. The work grew on my hands, and I grew fond of it..."

The imaginative background of Otranto is a Gothic story in itself. Its publishing history gave us the trope of the "found manuscript," it was composed in a Gothic revival "castle," its ghostly armored giant came to the author in a dream.

Medieval Romance was out of favor in the neoclassical 18th century. Anything medieval was considered barbaric and uncouth by the aesthetic standards of the time. We see the first stirrings of Romanticism in the "Gothic Revival" - a sort of pre-Romanticism, if you will, that will lead us on to the likes of Sir Walter Scott, Coleridge, Byron, and the Shelleys. But that day was not yet come when Walpole first published The Castle of Otranto - he was helping to create this new movement in literature and the arts. Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Inquiry on the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful had appeared in 1757 (seven years before Otranto). Burke's new twist on the concept of the sublime divorced it from mere classical notions of beauty instilling pleasure. Burke maintained that awe and a sense of horror could also evoke a pleasurable emotional response - as long as the horror concerned was fictitious. And so we add another ingredient to the simmering cauldron of Gothic literature. Eye of newt, toe of frog, Burke's sublime, neo-medieval architecture... The Castle of Otranto is taking shape in the rising vapors.

Along with lizard's leg and howlet's wing, we must not forget to toss the plays of William Shakespeare into the cauldron. Consider the witchcraft present in Macbeth, the chanting and prophecies of the three Weird Sisters, the omens, the dramatic weather reflecting dark deeds. Think of the ghost in Hamlet. Think of ancient kings and castle settings, revenge, murder, and high dramatic style. Shakespearean elements abound in The Castle of Otranto - Walpole explicitly acknowledges his debt to the Bard in the preface to the second edition. Even the five chapter structure of the novel echoes the five acts of a Shakespearean drama.

This post has not even touched on the plot of the novel in question - rather, its focus has been on setting the scene and the building up of a Gothic atmosphere, which I believe are crucial to the enjoyment of the book. It can't be read like a modern novel with well-developed characters. It isn't that sort of book. It reads like a fast-paced drama peopled with stock characters who speak in elevated style, as one would find in the theater. In Walpole's story, he sought to blend the imaginative elements of the medieval romance with the more naturalistic touches of the modern novel: and thus, the Gothic genre was born. This may not be the best Gothic novel, but it was the first. If we suspend our disbelief, spectres, prophecies, trapdoors, maidens in distress, dark secrets, and subterraneous passages await.