The Monk A Romance

"The whole work is distinguished by the variety and impressiveness of its incidents; and the author every-where discovers an imagination rich, powerful, and fervid." -Samuel Taylor Coleridge "Situations of torment, and images of naked horror, are easily conceived; and a writer in whose works they abound deserves our gratitude almost equally with him who should drag us by way of sport through a military hospital, or force us to sit at the dissecting table of a natural philosopher. . . . The romance writer possesses an unlimited power over situations; but he must scrupulously make his characters act in congruity with them. Let him work physical wonders only, and we will be content to dream with him for a while; but the first moral miracle which he attempts, he disgusts and awakens us." -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Critical Review, February 1797 Written in ten weeks when the author was nineteen and published in 1796 when he was twenty, Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk is the most lurid of the Gothic novels and one of the most vividly written. Savaged by critics for its supposed profanity and obscenity, The Monk became a succès de scandale when it was published in 1796 - not least because its author was a member of parliament. The novel attracted many readers who were eager to see whether it lived up to its macabre and racy notoriety. It recounts the diabolical decline of Ambrosio, a Capuchin superior, who succumbs first to temptations offered by a young girl who has entered his monastery disguised as a boy, and continues chronicling his descent with increasingly depraved acts of sorcery, murder, incest and torture. Combining sensationalism with acute psychological insight, this masterpiece of Gothic fiction is a powerful exploration of how violent and erotic impulses can break through the barriers of social and moral restraint.