Warner, William. "Colloquium on Genre 2013-2014." Genre Colloquium. 1 Jan. 2014. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.
A Letter from the Editors
Dear Reader(s),
As students enrolled in The Age of Austen course, we have compiled research pertaining to the history and critical reception of The Monk, as well as biographical information on its author, Matthew Gregory Lewis. We welcome you to look through the information enclosed, as it will surely add depth to your reading of this complex, dramatic, and nuanced work.
To briefly summarize, Matthew Lewis' The Monk tells the ill-fated tale of Ambrosio, a devout Catholic driven to commit acts of sin and evil after he succumbs to illicit sexual temptation. His downfall is plagued by incest, murderous violence, and a propensity for lust, leading to his ultimate demise: being taken by the Devil himself.
This page contains research obtained from eighteenth century databases, archives, and critical essays that are cited when applicable.
Our collection of information surrounding the author and the novel enriches the understanding of this Gothic novel, and its reception from 1798 through the Nineteenth Century. By scouring archives, biographies and critical essays, we have gathered the information to be easily accessible to other students to help with their scholastic enterprises and to learn more about The Monk.
Criticism and Reception Through the Centuries
1797 In Coleridge’s introduction, he deems Matthew Lewis’ The Monk a work “of no common genius.” The work itself, although is devoid of giving the reader a sense of imaginative thought or thought-provoking mindsets, is presented effectively by Lewis because of its excellent plot-focused storytelling. Furthermore, the story elements itself describe the titular character Ambrosio’s experiences throughout the story as relevant and critical to the story’s great success, “proud of his own undeviating rectitude, and severe to the faults of others, is successfully assailed by the tempter of mankind, and seduced to the perpetration of rape and murder, and finally precipitated into a contract in which he consigns his soul to everlasting perdition.” Coleridge ultimately establishes the fact that even though the story is not exactly thought-provoking, the plot and stories is terrifically told. However, with that said, Coleridge addresses the numerous faults as well, which he declares are more glaring than the novel’s merits.
Coleridge finds the formulaic events in the novel as unrealistic and finds that events and experiences happening in the novel can be changed anytime by the either, regardless of whether or not they serve the plot effectively. He states, “All events are levelled into one common mass, and become almost equally probable, where the order of nature may be changed wherever the author's purposes demand it. No address is requisite to the accomplishment of any design; and no pleasure therefore can be received from the perception of difficulty surmounted. The writer may make us wonder, but he cannot surprise us.” Therefore, the novel has no surprises; it is formulaic and plot-driven to the point of its own detriment. He finds that Lewis’ story is not as thought-provoking as other works and because of this quality, translates to the author’s ineffectiveness in writing a story. Ambrosio’s actions do not hold against human moral judgment, as he is constantly squashed by spiritual beings in the novel.
Finally, Coleridge deems this novel a romance, but a romance with vulgar taste as he describes the shock that a parent would find if a son or daughter were to read this, ”we declare it to be our opinion, that the Monk is a romance, which if a parent saw in the hands of a son or daughter, he might reasonably turn pale.” The descriptions of horrific events happening in the novel, such as the thought processes Ambrosio undergoes during his temptations and the “harlotry” of Matilda further indicates that this novel is in poor taste with its descriptions and ideals. Coleridge even comments that the author’s mindset has a large role in shaping the vulgarities, “The sufferings which he describes are so frightful and intolerable, that we break with abruptness from the delusion, and indignantly suspect the man of a species of brutality, who could find a pleasure in wantonly imagining them.” He concludes that although the novel has its merits such as describing events really well, the romantic aspect of it is non existent when the content is described in such vivid detail and minuteness that it turns vulgar and distasteful at the end.
Citation:
Review by: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Critical Review
To read the review online, click here
1797 William Wilberforce, a high ranking member the Proclamation Society, made an obscure reference in his diary about The Monk. Though not much is said in the entry, the mention of the novel at a dinner party suggests that it was notable enough to have attention brought to it. So much controversy surrounded Lewis's work, that he was forced to edit later editions to avoid prosecution.
Citation:
"Genres for the Prosecution: Pornography and the Gothic"
Review by: Michael Gamer
PMLA, Vol. 114, No. 5 (Oct., 1999), pp. 1043-1054
Published by: Modern Language Association
The article can be found on JSTOR, here
1907 George Slythe Street in his publication of "The Ghosts of Picadilly," which is found in the Monthly Review, remarks that the Monk destroyed 'Mat Lewis' socially, and pitied him. Though the novel had made him a fashionable writer at the time, which Street claims was Lewis's aspiration, by the time Street wrote this review his famous work was "forgotten." The detriment to Lewis's social life is noted by the condescending remarks of Walter Scott, "...you would have sworn he had been a parvenu of yesterday, yet he had lived all his life in good society" (62). Street sympathizes with Lewis, and comments more on the man himself than of the famous novel; however, he does mention he pities him for being attacked by Mrs. Grundy.
Citation:
"The Ghosts of Picadilly"
G.S. Street
The Monthly Review vol 26, January-March 1907, pp 61-73
Edited by: Sir Henry Newbalt and Charles Hanbury-Williams
Published: Ballantyne & CO
The Monthly Review vol. 26 can be read, here
1952 John Paul Pritchard of the University of Oklahoma criticizes the novel’s “faulty structure, its slow start, its bad taste, its overdone rhetoric, and its implausible characterization,” but praises the editor’s skill as well as the historical relevance of the novel.
Citation:
The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh by Walter Ralegh; Agnes M.C. Latham
Review by: John Paul Pritchard
Books Abroad, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Autumn, 1952), p.400
Published by: University of Oklahoma
The article can be found on JSTOR, here
1975 In his text, “the Monk: Matilda and the Rhetoric of Deceit,” Peter Grudin uses other critics assumption of the incomprehensibility of The Monk and tries to explain why the lack of evidence of coherence from these theories inhibits the work from being “representative of a genre.” He goes on to discuss scenes like the Bleeding Nun, which may add confusion to the work, but concludes with his assertion that Matthew Gregory Lewis has essentially reinvented the genre framework of a Gothic: “his novel recreates a world that is theologically as well as physically archaic.”
Citation:
“The Monk”: Matilda and the Rhetoric of Deceit by Peter Grudin
The Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 5, No. 2 (May, 1975), pp 136-146
Published by: Department of English Language and Literature. Eastern Michigan University
This article can be found on JSTOR, here
Coleridge finds the formulaic events in the novel as unrealistic and finds that events and experiences happening in the novel can be changed anytime by the either, regardless of whether or not they serve the plot effectively. He states, “All events are levelled into one common mass, and become almost equally probable, where the order of nature may be changed wherever the author's purposes demand it. No address is requisite to the accomplishment of any design; and no pleasure therefore can be received from the perception of difficulty surmounted. The writer may make us wonder, but he cannot surprise us.” Therefore, the novel has no surprises; it is formulaic and plot-driven to the point of its own detriment. He finds that Lewis’ story is not as thought-provoking as other works and because of this quality, translates to the author’s ineffectiveness in writing a story. Ambrosio’s actions do not hold against human moral judgment, as he is constantly squashed by spiritual beings in the novel.
Finally, Coleridge deems this novel a romance, but a romance with vulgar taste as he describes the shock that a parent would find if a son or daughter were to read this, ”we declare it to be our opinion, that the Monk is a romance, which if a parent saw in the hands of a son or daughter, he might reasonably turn pale.” The descriptions of horrific events happening in the novel, such as the thought processes Ambrosio undergoes during his temptations and the “harlotry” of Matilda further indicates that this novel is in poor taste with its descriptions and ideals. Coleridge even comments that the author’s mindset has a large role in shaping the vulgarities, “The sufferings which he describes are so frightful and intolerable, that we break with abruptness from the delusion, and indignantly suspect the man of a species of brutality, who could find a pleasure in wantonly imagining them.” He concludes that although the novel has its merits such as describing events really well, the romantic aspect of it is non existent when the content is described in such vivid detail and minuteness that it turns vulgar and distasteful at the end.
Citation:
Review by: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Critical Review
To read the review online, click here
1797 William Wilberforce, a high ranking member the Proclamation Society, made an obscure reference in his diary about The Monk. Though not much is said in the entry, the mention of the novel at a dinner party suggests that it was notable enough to have attention brought to it. So much controversy surrounded Lewis's work, that he was forced to edit later editions to avoid prosecution.
Citation:
"Genres for the Prosecution: Pornography and the Gothic"
Review by: Michael Gamer
PMLA, Vol. 114, No. 5 (Oct., 1999), pp. 1043-1054
Published by: Modern Language Association
The article can be found on JSTOR, here
1907 George Slythe Street in his publication of "The Ghosts of Picadilly," which is found in the Monthly Review, remarks that the Monk destroyed 'Mat Lewis' socially, and pitied him. Though the novel had made him a fashionable writer at the time, which Street claims was Lewis's aspiration, by the time Street wrote this review his famous work was "forgotten." The detriment to Lewis's social life is noted by the condescending remarks of Walter Scott, "...you would have sworn he had been a parvenu of yesterday, yet he had lived all his life in good society" (62). Street sympathizes with Lewis, and comments more on the man himself than of the famous novel; however, he does mention he pities him for being attacked by Mrs. Grundy.
Citation:
"The Ghosts of Picadilly"
G.S. Street
The Monthly Review vol 26, January-March 1907, pp 61-73
Edited by: Sir Henry Newbalt and Charles Hanbury-Williams
Published: Ballantyne & CO
The Monthly Review vol. 26 can be read, here
1952 John Paul Pritchard of the University of Oklahoma criticizes the novel’s “faulty structure, its slow start, its bad taste, its overdone rhetoric, and its implausible characterization,” but praises the editor’s skill as well as the historical relevance of the novel.
Citation:
The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh by Walter Ralegh; Agnes M.C. Latham
Review by: John Paul Pritchard
Books Abroad, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Autumn, 1952), p.400
Published by: University of Oklahoma
The article can be found on JSTOR, here
1975 In his text, “the Monk: Matilda and the Rhetoric of Deceit,” Peter Grudin uses other critics assumption of the incomprehensibility of The Monk and tries to explain why the lack of evidence of coherence from these theories inhibits the work from being “representative of a genre.” He goes on to discuss scenes like the Bleeding Nun, which may add confusion to the work, but concludes with his assertion that Matthew Gregory Lewis has essentially reinvented the genre framework of a Gothic: “his novel recreates a world that is theologically as well as physically archaic.”
Citation:
“The Monk”: Matilda and the Rhetoric of Deceit by Peter Grudin
The Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 5, No. 2 (May, 1975), pp 136-146
Published by: Department of English Language and Literature. Eastern Michigan University
This article can be found on JSTOR, here
The History of the Monk
The Monk was first published in 1796 with only Matthew Gregory Lewis's initials after the preface, and it was published anonymously. The second edition was published later that year in October and with his name attached to the work. It was translated into other languages like French as well. As the work gained popularity, it also incurred criticism for being blasphemous and plagiarized. These serious accusations caused Lewis emend his later editions, and by the fourth he had removed anything that could be seen as attacking virtue (Leask). |
Additional Works Cited
Leask, Nigel. "Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775–1818)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004. Web. 12 Dec. 2014.
“Matthew Gregory Lewis | Recent Antiquarian Acquisitions.” The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.
Warner, William. "Colloquium on Genre 2013-2014." Genre Colloquium. 1 Jan. 2014. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.