Wordworth Tales Of Mystery & Supernatural

[Lobolover]

Wordsworth is not one of those "rarity" publishers to just publish one short story as a book, so I gather it would be his ghost writing efforts .

 

[Connavar]

Arent they stories like Varney who are actually good from those days ? I hunger to read some of those works.


The Castle of Otranto/Nightmare Abbey/Vathek - are they really classic Gothic stories ? I mean wondefully gothic like a dark story with great athmosphere by Poe what i think of when i hear about that kind of story ?

I want to get more Wordsworth and i have stopped by the omnibus several times in the bookstore thinking about it. Maybe i should wiki up the authors.

 

[Lobolover]

Gothic is not synonymous of Poe . The second one is a parody from what I get, and the first one is the fist gothic story.....and sure feels like it . In fact, lots of people hate it , though I don't ind it that bad, just mediocre, but important to understanding the genre .

 

[GOLLUM]

The Castle of Otranto/Nightmare Abbey/Vathek - are they really classic Gothic stories ? I mean wondefully gothic like a dark story with great athmosphere by Poe what i think of when i hear about that kind of story ?.

Well I'm going to generalize a little but basically Yes the authors of these classic Gothic tales in a sense lay the foundations for Poe and others to take the Gothic to one may argue a new level, certainly a varied interpretation and the Victorian Gothic influence can be readily seen in Poe's work as well as Lovecraft. These "earlier" Gothic Romance stories certainly featured extreme emotions, villians, supernatural beings and above all for me anyway a feeling of dark brooding atmospheres often embodied in the Gothic archtitecture of the time. A case in point is that the Castle Of Otranto is generally regared as being the starting point of Gothic fiction. Vathek too as well as Lewis's The Monk are definitely considered classics of the Genre. Nightmare Abbey from my understanding is more of a satirical take on the Romance Gothics of the time, so perhaps that isn't a classic Gothic in the way the other 2 books are.

I have an Oxford edn. of Four Gothic novels namely The Castle Of Otrantro, The Monk, Varthek and Frankenstein. You would be hard pressed I feel not to class these all as classics of that particular Genre.

I'm sure J.D. and others will elaborate further including Poe's place in Gothic literature but I hope this helps give you a better idea of what I meant by that earlier comment.

Cheers....

 

[j d worthington]

Connavar: Lobo and GOLLUM pretty much covered it (though I'd take issue with the use of "Victorian" here, as Poe died before that era even began -- his influences were more the writers of the Romantic era and the early American Renaissance or their predecessors).

While I have a fondness for Otranto, it really isn't for the majority of readers in the genre. Lovecraft's comments on it in SHiL are pretty much on target. Vathek is heavily influenced by the Arabian Nights; so, while a Gothic in one sense (harking back to the influences which helped create the Gothic in the first place), not in the sense usually meant. Nightmare Abbey is a pure parody of the genre -- a darned good one, but not to be taken seriously.

Varney...? Well, the penny dreadfuls were never really "good". They had their moments, but they were hackwork, stretched out as long as they brought in cash, with absolutely no regard to coherence, structure, or anything else associated with intent to tell a good story. They ramble all over the place (much worse than any of the genuine Gothics!) and they simply are often bad. That said, if you're going to tackle any of them, I'd suggest The String of Pearls (Sweeney Todd) or Wagner the Wehr-wolf, as those, at least, have more entertainment value than any of the others I've encountered.

 

[Lobolover]

J.D. : so that means you won't be re-reading Varney any time soon ?

 

[GOLLUM]

Connavar: Lobo and GOLLUM pretty much covered it (though I'd take issue with the use of "Victorian" here, as Poe died before that era even began -- his influences were more the writers of the Romantic era and the early American Renaissance or their predecessors).

AH Yes my bad I did of course mean primarily the Romantic movement....blame it on that cheap wine and a late night....

So what to you is the greatest Gothic novel ever written? I realise there's different strains of Gothic but overall if you had to choose a single work. Was it Melmoth The Wanderer, The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk,Dracula or some other offering?

 

[Lobolover]

Having not read the others, I can however whole heartily encourage you to read Melmoth, but I warn youi, it is quite big .

 

[Fried Egg]

Connavar: Lobo and GOLLUM pretty much covered it (though I'd take issue with the use of "Victorian" here, as Poe died before that era even began -- his influences were more the writers of the Romantic era and the early American Renaissance or their predecessors).

If the "Victorian" era is taken to mean from the beginning to the end of the reign of Queen Victoria, then your statement is incorrect since she reigned from 1837 to 1901 and Poe died in 1849. But I suppose you are mean stylistically speaking?

 

[Connavar]

Well Oranto,Vathek sounds like they are worth a try atleast. I'm looking for quality and the style the title of the omnibus mention. The parody isnt a real interest to me.

I want to read classic Gothic stories.

Speaking about Sweeney Todd is it entertainment wise as wonderfully dark as Tim Burton made the movie. I enjoyed that movie alot despite the musical style.

 

[j d worthington]

If the "Victorian" era is taken to mean from the beginning to the end of the reign of Queen Victoria, then your statement is incorrect since she reigned from 1837 to 1901 and Poe died in 1849. But I suppose you are mean stylistically speaking?

Correct. It took a bit for it to filter through the literati in Britain; it took even longer in the U.S. (though Poe was always more influenced by European sources, I think).

My vote would have to also go to Melmoth, with a very, very close second to The Mysteries of Udolpho -- actually a more refined novel, but with somewhat less passion. However, as Lobo says, they are both quite big books. (For Udolpho, I'd suggest the Oxford edition. Minuscule print, but it does contain the full text (as well as a very good introduction and notes. I'd also advise taking it slowly, and letting each scene have room to breathe and take on all its implications, as the atmosphere in that one is largely depending on very quiet and subtle touches -- nor is it all horrific, by any means.)

The Monk, for all it has some stupendous stuff to it, also has some absolutely egregious nonsense; it's an uneven performance, at best: often crude, sometimes downright silly or boring. One has to have a love of the type to read this one with patience, I think....

I'd also strongly suggest Barbauld's short piece, as it is quite atmospheric and full of strange wonders....

 

[Lobolover]

Then again, the Barbauld may be rather lacking in length, so the person could use some other period pieces/short stories to go along with it .

Melmoth is saved from becoming tedious by resorting the story within a story format and so changing scenes freshly enough- though alot of the plots of these are never resolved .

 

[j d worthington]

Then again, the Barbauld may be rather lacking in length, so the person could use some other period pieces/short stories to go along with it .

There are several good anthologies of such, from the Oxford Book of Gothic Tales to Peter Haining's two-volume Gothic Tales of Terror, which can give a fairly good, representative selection. The Wordsworth volume, for instance, has quite a few good pieces, as well as some of the lesser examples, of the type.

Melmoth is saved from becoming tedious by resorting the story within a story format and so changing scenes freshly enough- though alot of the plots of these are never resolved .[/QUOTE]

This, though, was fairly common with the Gothic tale since Lewis' The Monk, which goes back and forth between two or three plotlines. Melmoth is, however, considerably more complex in that regard, being a tale within a tale within a tale within a tale, and so on, resulting in a very convoluted (to the point, at times, of being quite unwieldly) structure. The power of Maturin's imagination and his scenarios, however, carry it through surprisingly well.

(On the subject of such structure: Varney is an even more extreme example, having more plotlines than any but the most attentive reader can keep track of... but it is done without planning ahead, so they frequently become jumbled, confused, and simply forgotten, leading to a rather sorry mess at times....)

 

[Lobolover]

So, is there any coherent "original" backstory to Varney that gets finished off at the end properly ?

 

[j d worthington]

As such: not really. We do have the resolution of Varney's existence (more or less, though even that has become quite confused), but the original characters (with the exception of one or two) have been completely forgotten long before that point. And the resolution is certainly not satisfactory: it is absurd, abrupt, and totally without any sort of preparation. There is a theory (and I tend to agree) that the writer(s) received word that the sales had dropped off to the point it was necessary to wrap things up with that week's installment, so they simply wrote a death scene for Varney, without any kind of build-up or consideration for thing anything together... giving the final chapter or two the feel of something intensely rushed and haphazard.

Overall, interesting more for its place in literary history than for any other reason....

 

[Lobolover]

So could you call it the worst gothic story you've ever read ?

 

[j d worthington]

No. Percy Shelley's Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne between them, deserve that... honor....

 

[Lobolover]

Being subject related, could you tell us why you think so ? Personaly, the worst one I read was the one by Kahlert .

 

[Fried Egg]

I've finally finished reading the M.R. James "Collected Ghost Stories". Here is my review:

M.R. James writes like an old English scholar; upper class and antiquated. I have been gradually making my way through this collection of stories over the last 18 months and I should probably not have spread them so thinly. I was able to enjoy the stories more when I read a few in quick succession and got used to his style.

Some of the stories were quite chilling such as "The Ash Tree" and "Rats". Others were extremely subtle and complex with multi layered narratives and requiring the reader to make deductions that were not always spelled out. This worked well with stories like "Martin's Close" but was just too obscure (for me) when it came to stories such as "Two Doctors". Other stories mixed in a fair bit of humour such as "Oh whistle, my lad, and I'll come get you".

I definitely think that the stories are best read in the right setting, say a candle lit room at night and would probably benefit from being read aloud by a good story teller.

 

[j d worthington]

Being subject related, could you tell us why you think so ? Personaly, the worst one I read was the one by Kahlert .

HPL hinted at it when he called them "schoolboy effusions" and said they were "both imitations of Zofloya". So they are -- to the point of copying almost verbatim certain sections of that novel (along with doing the same with bits and pieces from other works). They represent some of Shelley's poorest writing (with, it must be admitted, occasional flashes here and there). But, in essence, they are both extremely imitative, lacking in imagination, hastily written, and simply lacking in any genuine aesthetic value. They should be read as bits of literary curiosa, or by someone interested in all of Shelley's writing, rather than as independent pieces on their own -- and certainly not as "classics" in the genre....