The Castle of Otranto

The Book Books. Has pages, a cover, a back, a table of contents. Certainly is a book!

Good gracious, this book is wild. At points reading I didn’t know whether to read it like King Arthur or Monty Python. It presents itself as a Gothic, but there is quite a bit of unintentional (intentional?) humor despite the dark elements.Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto is significant as it was stamped as the first Gothic novel, and so was the first of its kind in an extensive line of this tradition. Yet, the funny thing is that at points this book appears to be a parody or caricature of itself or the genre in general. This is because of the bizarrely “comical” elements and over the top quality to how things are presented.When you think about the Gothic tradition, this one really has it all. From giant helmets crashing to the earth, portraits moving, gigantic knights appearing, apparitions with dire warnings, prophecies and curses, scheming princes, maidens in peril, noble and honorable peasants, and quite a bit of melodrama, The Castle of Otranto has it covered.The novel’s main storyline and premise is Prince Manfred’s efforts to retain his reign and avert a curse as he tries to get his son Conrad married to the Marquis’ daughter, Isabella. However, things don’t go as planned when a giant helmet comes crashing to the earth, and kills Conrad right before the wedding. Manfred, seeing a vision, and dreading the ancient prophecy, now decided he will take matters into his own hands, and marry Isabella himself. However, Isabella flees and escapes to safer places. From here, we meet a bevy of characters and various situations and conflicts to get through.I felt like the plot was a little all over the place and muddled, especially in the book’s second half. As stated earlier, there is a campiness to this story and plot that makes even the “scary” parts lack the element of tenseness one might find in similar books. I read somewhere that the author’s inspiration for this book (along with his admiration of Shakespeare’s works) came from a dream he had that had the basic elements that make up this story. This makes sense, given how scatterbrained the story is and the flow of the book feels.In the end, I appreciate the novel’s relevance and historical significance as a precursor to the Gothic tradition, but one can easily find much better-quality Gothic novel elsewhere. That being said, this was definitely a unique reading experience.

A good book to read on a rainy or cold day. The cover is cool. Almost feels like suede. I enjoyed the setup.

Great value and quality!

One of the most famous Gothic works of fiction.

This book sucks. I hate it. Not even good quality. And it smells bad.

Given as a gift so unable to comment

Download the PDF, this copy is just the printed pdf anywho

Pretty funky for a novel, it does get a little convoluted but it's easy to understand. Very interesting to study as part of gothic literature

I brought this book for study purposes and often use introductions to help understand the context. Unfortunately I had not realised that this was not included so wouldn't recommend.