The Monk (Oxford World's Classics) Read online

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  Introduction, Bibliography, Chronology,

  Notes © Emma McEvoy 1995

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  First published as a World’s Classics paperback 1980

  Reissued as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 1998

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  ISBN 0–19–283394–4

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  OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

  For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700 titles—from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels—the series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing.

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  Refer to the Table of Contents to navigate through the material in this Oxford World’s Classics ebook. Use the asterisks (*) throughout the text to access the hyperlinked Explanatory Notes.

  OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

  MATTHEW LEWIS

  The Monk

  Edited by

  HOWARD ANDERSON

  With an Introduction and Notes by

  EMMA McEVOY

  OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

  THE MONK

  MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS was born in London in 1775, the first of the four children of Frances Maria and Matthew Lewis. When he was 6 his mother left his father. Lewis was devoted to his mother, and later helped support her financially, writing his first plays for her benefit. In 1792 he spent six months in Weimar, learning German and reading and translating German literature, especially the works of the Sturm-und-Drang writers. This was to be an important influence on his later work.

  Lewis’s father, a high-ranking official in the War Office, hoped for a career in diplomacy for his son, but Matthew, plagued by ennui whilst working in the British Embassy in The Hague, started a prolific career as a writer by composing The Monk in ten weeks, at the age of 19. On publication in 1796 it became an extremely popular—and vilified—work, and Lewis, thereafter a literary celebrity, became known as ‘Monk’ Lewis. In 1798, after a law suit, he was forced to produce a censored version of the work.

  Lewis wrote no more novels. The majority of his work between 1796 and 1812 consists of plays, mainly spectacular melodramas and comedies, many of which proved extremely successful. He also produced some volumes of poetry, and was well respected as a poet.

  After his father’s death in 1812, and his inheritance of a large fortune, Lewis produced no more plays. Instead he toured the Continent, staying with Byron and the Shelleys on the way, and visited the plantations in the West Indies that he had inherited, in order to improve the lot of the slaves.

  Lewis is constantly referred to as a lovable man; ‘a jewel of a man’ even, though according to Byron, argumentative and ‘a damned bore’. Likewise, Walter Scott musing on Lewis in 1825 wrote ‘How few friends one has whose faults are only ridiculous’. In 1818, returning from the West Indies, Lewis died of yellow fever.

  EMMA MCEVOY is a lecturer in the Department of English, Goldsmiths, University of London.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Note on the Text

  Select Bibliography

  A Chronology of Matthew Gregory Lewis

  THE MONK

  Explanatory Notes

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To Mrs Anne Ehrenpries I owe the suggestion that first led me to the manuscript of The Monk. Mr W. L. Hanchant of the Wisbech and Fenland Museum was unfailingly generous in making the manuscript available for my study in Wisbech and in allowing me to obtain a copy for use in preparing this edition. Aid from Indiana University and from Michigan State University helped to make my work possible. I am indebted to the Librarian of Harvard University, to Mr William Cagle of the Lilly Library at Indiana University, and to Professor William Todd for providing copies of the early editions of the novel. Professor Ronald Gottesman gave me advice on every aspect of the preparation of my text, and Mrs Susan Gaylord, Miss Lorraine Hart, Mr Robert Ouellette, Mr Robert Reno, and Mr David Wright are all to be thanked for their help in carrying it out. Finally I want to acknowledge the initial encouragement of the late Professor Herbert Davis, to whose memory I dedicate the work I have done on this volume.

  HOWARD ANDERSON

  I should like to thank Julie Cooper, Robert Lee, and my father for many interesting conversations on The Monk, which produced some useful ideas and suggestions. I am indebted to Karen Tiedtke, Robert Lee, my father, and Malcolm Upham for their help in researching the notes, to Robert, Julie, my mother, Dan, Ayesha, Rusty, and Ted for proof-reading, and to Richard Haslam for information on surrealism and The Monk. I should also particularly like to thank Karen Tiedtke for the translations from Lewis’s German sources in the Explanatory Notes.

  EMMA McEVOY

  INTRODUCTION

  WHEN Matthew Lewis’s The Monk: A Romance appeared in 1796, it was greeted by a variety of critical opinions. ‘Lust, murder, incest, and every atrocity that can disgrace human nature, brought together, without the apology of probability, or even possibility, for their introduction’,1 read the review in The British Critic, in a manner which unfortunately resembled the lurid advertising found at the beginning of the extra-salacious abridged editions of the work in circulating libraries. Coleridge, writing for the Critical Review, declared it to be ‘a romance, which if a parent saw in the hands of a son or daughter, he might reasonably turn pale’.2 He also called it blasphemous—a charge which signalled the start of
much trouble for Lewis. On the other hand, the Monthly Mirror reckoned not to remember ‘to have read a more interesting production’3—praise which it was to increase in an attempt to defend the novel two years later.

  The battleground on which most of the controversy about The Monk arose was the issue of its morality. A novel had not only to please, but also to instruct, and it should instruct in the ways of virtue rather than vice. An issue of a journal entitled The Flapper provides a nice illustration of these more conservative demands. The novel form was still young and not highly respected, and its latest development in what we now call the Gothic novel was the cause of much alarm for more serious educationalists and moralists within the tradition of rationalism. It takes the form of a letter from a newly reformed, anonymous (or rather pseudonymous, for he calls himself ‘Aurelius’) novel-addict who had been reduced to ‘inert imbecility’4 by his habit. Aurelius now, however, is able to partake of the occasional novel without fear and has set out to perform an act of public duty to the novel-readers of Ireland by warning them about The Monk. He refers to its ‘scenes of the most wanton and immodest nature, described in terms scarcely decent’ (p. 4) and declares that, as the temptations Ambrosio faces are practically irresistible, the novel may have no moral, an opinion which redounds unfortunately upon Aurelius.

  Most of the adverse criticism was aimed at the novel’s lewdness and blasphemy. Exception was taken to a certain passage in volume ii, chapter IV, where we are told of Elvira’s censoring of her daughter’s Bible; she omits the ‘improper’ passages lest they encourage the wrong ideas in Antonia’s breast (p. 259). The ‘lewd exploits’ and ‘lascivious jokes’ of various romances, it is declared, are less provocative than the Bible. What might seem strangest to a modern reader is that the tongue-in-cheek tone of this passage is overlooked. It pokes fun at sacred cows, and makes deliberately outrageous comparisons which mock the pious tones of Elvira, and the pomposities of overseers of education, prurient matrons, and critics who express horror at the decadence of romances. However, in the eyes of many, the passage was a statement from an irreligious Lewis, a serious case of blasphemy.

  The more conservative critics increased their cries against Lewis. For them, The Monk threatened to corrupt youth because of its supposed irreligion, which they associated with a dangerous revolutionary spirit. Thus, the European Magazine of 1797 suggests that it was Lewis’s intention to attack religious orders and religion itself, comparing The Monk to the anti-religious publications which appeared in France before the Revolution, and declaring it to have ‘neither originality, morals nor probability to recommend it’.5 In the revised fifth edition of The Pursuits of Literature, a wellknown satirical work remarkable for its sustained spleen, the alarmist author, T. J. Mathias, appealed to fears of growing irreligion and democratic tendencies raised by the French Revolution, asking, ‘Is this a time to poison the water of our land in their springs and fountains?’6 It is strange how easily the supposed assault against traditional morality is declared to have been inspired by the French Revolution. But, for Mathias, literature is capable of overthrowing the state.7 One of the main grievances expressed by Coleridge in his piece for the Critical Review is that Lewis signed the second edition (the first appeared anonymously) ‘M. G. LEWIS, Esq. M.P.’. He announces that we must ‘stare and tremble’8 at the fact that a ‘LEGISLATOR’ has brought forward such a work. For his part, Mathias suggests that the Bible passage is ‘indictable at Common Law’ (p. 239), and calls for the prosecution of Lewis. Although contemporary accounts do not make clear how far the proceedings went, it is known that Lewis was taken to court, with the result that he had to pledge to recall existing copies of the third edition and alter and delete certain passages for the fourth. In the censored edition there are no mentions of sexual activity, no ‘on-stage’ seductions or murder attempts, and gone are the descriptions of unclothed female bodies. All the musings on physical pleasure and the physical differences between the sexes have disappeared, and the climactic crypt scene is omitted, as are all mentions of such provocative words as ‘lust’, ‘incontinence’, and ‘enjoyment’.

  So much for the critics, whose behaviour Lewis had already predicted in volume ii, chapter II, when Raymond discusses the attempts ‘made by partial and ill-humoured Criticism’ at ‘stigmatizing the Author’ (p. 199). It is not that the 1790s was a homogeneously conservative decade, but rather that the frightened conservatives of the time reacted strongly to the work. One of the main causes of the more hysterical reactions was that no critic denied, and nearly all affirmed, that Lewis had ‘genius’, and it must be borne in mind that these adverse reactions do not reflect majority opinion. Some critics championed the cause of The Monk, but their insistence on its moral purity seems just the reverse side of their colleagues’ criteria for criticism. The Monthly Mirror, in its ‘Apology for the Monk’ of 1797, declares that the work preaches the danger of being over-confident in virtue and of straying even once from the path of strict moral rectitude. It insists that this ‘beautiful romance is well-calculated to support the cause of virtue’,9 although this defence seems more ludicrous than the charges of immorality. Other papers avoid the issue of moral purity altogether and treat the novel merely as a good read. The Monthly Magazine only mentions its lack of regard for decorum.10 The Analytical Review adopts a more glib tone, and declares, of Ambrosio’s temptations and fall, ‘a man would deserve to be damned who could resist even devilish spells conducted with such address, and assuming such a heavenly form’.11

  The public reacted very differently from the critics. The novel went through two issues of a first edition, and a second edition six months later, in September 1796. A third edition appeared in 1797 and the fourth in 1798. The censored fourth edition was received with so much disappointment that by 1800 the few remaining copies of the unexpurgated third edition were selling for a guinea. The adverse reaction of some of the critics was very good publicity for Lewis, and illustrates well the fine, if existent, line between horror and fascination, and the attractiveness of condemnation; as does the following anecdote told by Montague Summers in The Gothic Quest. The obliging owner of a circulating library in Dublin ‘underscored all the naughty passages’12 so that her young female readers would know which parts to avoid. Whether this was intended to be an anti-Irish anecdote or not, it certainly shows the benefits of lip-service. The work was adapted into play form many times, the ballad in volume iii, chapter II—of Alonzo the Brave and Fair Imogine—was shown as a pantomime ballet, and Lewis became a celebrity—’Monk’ Lewis. As a play it made for popular adaptations, although a censored version in 1798, where Matilda is a virtuous woman and all ends happily, outraged its audiences so much that they hissed, causing one of the actresses who was carrying a wooden baby to exit too quickly, bump into a door, and knock the baby’s head off.

  On 27 July 1792, at the age of 17, Matthew Gregory Lewis arrived at Weimar in Germany, where he was to stay until February 1793. Whilst there, he kept the company of people with titles (he was fonder of them than he ought to have been, reported Walter Scott13) and studied German intensively. By the end of this period he was a fluent speaker and reader, and had started to translate some of the literature he found around him.

  The most horrifying literature available to Lewis in the English tradition would have comprised Jacobean tragedies (Shakespeare provides much inspiration for Gothic novelists), Milton’s Paradise Lost (compare Milton’s Satan to some of the descriptions of Ambrosio), and the productions of the ‘graveyard school’—an example of which Lewis includes in The Monk: Blair’s The Grave, a poem which, after 368 lines of descriptions of mouldering corpses and death agonies, has the stunningly placed exclamation ‘Sure, ’tis a Serious Thing to die!’14 The German literary scene, however, was specializing in a whole new horror aesthetic in the works of the Sturm-und-Drang writers. Sturm und Drang translates roughly as ‘Storm and Stress’, and the writers involved placed great emphasis on revolt, strong feeling, and the
passionate power of genius.

  Lewis was much taken with this shocking and often violent German writing and, later, he introduced much German Romantic writing to Britain. He met Goethe and translated some of his poetry, and brought translations of German plays to the English stage. We know from Byron’s letters and journals that Lewis translated Goethe’s Faust aloud for him at Coligny in 1816.15 Struck by the folk ballads he encountered, Lewis translated some originals and composed poetry in this style for The Monk (see ‘The Water King’ and the ‘Ballad of Alonzo the Brave and Fair Imogine’). The latter takes its central theme from Bürger’s ‘Lenore’ (1773) and was much admired by critics and public when it first appeared. Coleridge was struck by Lewis’s power of rendering ballads in easy modern language and declared it a great success.16

  However, the Schauer-Romantik—horror-Romantic—tradition proved the most important inspiration for Lewis. This writing features ghosts, murders, rapes, secret societies, devils, and tortures, and Lewis assimilated a variety of incidents, plots, and themes which he was to rework a couple of years later in The Monk. He used the works of Schauer-Romantik writers both indirectly and directly. Not only did he contribute to the English Gothic novel the pleasures of grisly descriptions and real devils, he also used some of the plots and characters he found in the German writing. Lewis mentions finding the legend of the Bleeding Nun in German folklore. The character of the Wandering Jew appears both in a poem by Schubart, ‘Der Ewige Jude’, which supplies many of the details for Lewis, and in a story by Schiller—Der Geisterseher—a work which also gave him the idea of a picture of the Madonna being used to inspire love for a living woman. Flammenberg’s Der Geisterbanner, translated for English audiences in 1794 as The Necromancer, provides a source for the banditti episode in the Black Forest and details for Elvira’s ghost. Many more sources have been suggested, but it is important to note that the Gothic thrives so much on convention that to cite direct sources is often impossible when so many works share the same stock episodes, characters, and even phrases. However, his most blatant ‘borrowing’ is the almost exact copy of the description of Ambrosio’s fate from a story by Veit Weber, ‘Die Teufelsbeschwörung’ (1791). Further details may be found in the explanatory notes, together with translations of some of the more relevant passages from the German.