The Comic Tragedy of Mere Men and Women: The Ambiguously Distracting Use of Laughter in The Castle of Otranto and Its Prefaces

Authors

  • Ahmet Suner Yaşar University

Abstract

This paper attempts to analyze the curious effects of the comic scenes in The Castle of Otranto (1764) through a close reading of Walpole’s famous prefaces to the novel. The comic scenes evoke an incongruous dramatic response and contradict the claims made in the prefaces, according to which comic elements highlight dramatic ones. While being often thought of as indicative of a general aesthetic failure, the comic elements in this foundational text of the Gothic are indeed subtle, complex and artful. More precisely, Walpole’s curious use of laughter makes a complex appeal to an extra-dramatic level which undercuts the reader’s identification with the dramatic situations represented in the novel.

Keywords: Horace Walpole; The Castle of Otranto; comedy; drama; Gothic novel; prefaces

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Ahmet Suner, Yaşar University

Ahmet Süner has a PhD in Comparative Literature (USC) and Structural Engineering (Duke University). He currently works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Yaşar University, Turkey. His research interests include Gothic literature, philosophy of
language and literature, and cinema. His most recent publications include essays on Heidegger, Jean Luc Godard and Matthew Lewis.

References

Andriopoulos, Stefan. 1999. “The Invisible Hand: Supernatural Agency in Political Economy and the Gothic Novel.” ELH 66 (3): 739-758.

Clery, E. J. 1995. The Rise of Supernatural Fiction: 1762-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Finch, M. B. and E. Allison Peers. 1920. “Walpole’s Relations with Voltaire.” Modern Philology 18 (4): 189-200.

Fincher, Max. 2001. “Homosocial Sins and Identity in Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto.” Gothic Studies 3 (3): 229-245.

Frank, Marcie. 2003. “Horace Walpole’s Family Romances.” Modern Philology 100 (2): 417-435.

Gentile, Kathy Justice. 2009. “Sublime Drag: Supernatural Masculinity in Gothic

Fiction.” Gothic Studies 11 (1): 16-28.

Haggerty, George E. 1985. “Fact and Fancy in the Gothic Novel.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 39 (4): 379-391.

Hamm Jr., Robert B. 2009. “Hamlet and Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto.” SEL. Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 49 (3): 667-692.

Hogle, Jerrold E. 2010. “Hyper-reality and the Gothic Affect: The Sublimation of

Fear from Burke and Walpole to The Ring.” English Language Notes 48 (1): 163-175.

Horner, Avril and Sue Zlosnik. 2005. Gothic and the Comic Turn. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lake, Crystal B. 2013. “Bloody Records: Manuscripts and Politics in The Castle of Otranto.” Modern Philology 110 (4): 489-512.

Mack, Ruth. 2008. “Horace Walpole and the Objects of Literary History.” ELH 75 (2): 367-387.

Morris, David B. 1985. “Gothic Sublimity.” New Literary History 16 (2): 299-319.

Napier, Elizabeth R. 1987. The Failure of Gothic: Problems of Disjunction in an Eighteenth-Century Literary Form. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Reeve, Clara. 1778. The Old English Baron. 2nd ed. London: Edward and Charles Dilly.

Shapira, Yael. 2012. “Shakespeare, The Castle of Otranto, and the Problem of the Corpse on the Eighteenth-Century Stage.” Eighteenth-Century Life 36 (1): 1-29.

Walpole, Horace. (1764/1765) 1998. The Castle of Otranto. Edited by W. S. Lewis. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Watt, James. 1999. Contesting the Gothic: Fiction, Genre and Cultural Conflict, 1764-1832. Port Chester, NY: Cambridge UP.

Downloads

Published

2016-12-22

How to Cite

Suner, A. (2016). The Comic Tragedy of Mere Men and Women: The Ambiguously Distracting Use of Laughter in The Castle of Otranto and Its Prefaces. Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies, 38(2), 11–26. Retrieved from https://atlantisjournal.org/index.php/atlantis/article/view/234

Issue

2016: Vol. 38, Num. 2

Section

Articles

License

The authors retain copyright of articles. They authorise AEDEAN to publish them in its journal Atlantis and to include them in the indexing and abstracting services, academic databases and repositories the journal participates in.

Under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), for non-commercial (i.e., personal or academic) purposes only, users are free to share (i.e., copy and redistribute in any medium or format) and adapt (i.e., remix, transform and build upon) articles published in Atlantis, free of charge and without obtaining prior permission from the publisher or the author(s), as long as they give appropriate credit to the author, the journal (Atlantis) and the publisher (AEDEAN), provide the relevant URL link to the original publication and indicate if changes were made. Such attribution may be done in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the journal endorses the user or their use of the material published therein. Users who adapt (i.e., remix, transform or build upon the material) must distribute their contributions under the same licence as the original.

Self-archiving is also permitted, so that authors are allowed to deposit the published PDF version of their articles in academic and/or institutional repositories, without fee or embargo. Authors may also post their individual articles on their personal websites, again on condition that the original link to the online edition is provided.

Authors are expected to know and heed basic ground rules that preclude simultaneous submission and/or duplicate publication. Prospective contributors to Atlantis commit themselves to the following when they submit a manuscript:

  • That no concurrent consideration of the same, or almost identical, work by any other journal and/or publisher is taking place.
  • That the potential contribution has not appeared previously, in any form whatsoever, in another journal, electronic format or as a chapter/section of a book.

Seeking permission for the use of copyright material is the responsibility of the author.