The Monk (The World's Classics) ebook

Before there was "Frankenstein", before there was "Dracula," before "The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," there was "The Monk." While "The Monk" may not have been the first Gothic novel in the English language, or the greatest, it's certainly one of the most entertaining. Matthew Lewis, a mild-mannered social reformer who sought to improve the lot of slaves in the West Indies, wrote his only novel when he was 19 years old (the same age as Mary Shelley when she wrote "Frankenstein"), and its publication two years later, when he was already a Member of Parliament, caused an uproar such as had never been seen in British literature before. While not nearly as nasty as the productions of the Marquis de Sade (who admired it), "The Monk" is a far cry from the genteel efforts of Ann Radcliffe, bringing out in the open the sex and violence which was implied rather than represented directly in most Gothic novels. Also, he departed from the genre convention requiring supernatural goings-on to be explained away at the end (rather like "Scooby-Doo.") Ambrosio, the saturnine priest of Madrid, is in many ways the perfect Gothic villain--a Spanish Catholic priest, he embodies the lingering distrust the genre exhibited for anyone not a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Lewis skewers the Roman Catholic Church and has great fun doing so, combining mordant satire with grotesque horror and near pornography. His antihero progresses from attempted seduction to rape, murder, and a final, desperate deal with the Devil. Be warned: this book requires a strong stomach.
"The Monk" can be confusing with its lengthy cast of characters, its numerous subplots and digressions, and its tiresome verse interludes. Lewis had never been to Spain and uses Italian rather than Spanish for street names. Nonetheless, this is an immensely stirring and savage tale. Like revenge, it is best savored cold.

In THE MONK, the writing is beautiful - the descriptions emotional. It's a pity that we don't express ourselves this way today, but we would never have time in our fast-paced lives to do much else - eloquence requires time and an unhurried disposition. Lewis's writing style uses time effectively to tell his tale in some 230 pages. His use of language is precise, evocative, measured and moving. It is, above all, unhurried. Assuming that readers have no demands upon their daily lives...well then, adopt the style, have at it in all your emails. But, of course, this won't do, not today.

THE MONK is an excellent example of the Gothic style, written in 1796, not for the faint of heart - and certainly not for late night hours. Most of us have read books that curl the toes and freeze the spine, but Lewis's beautifully descriptive prose catches one off guard, and having been caught, the book remains open until the end of the last page. The book was exceptionally popular in its day and was imitated in the works of other writers, the proof of which is even seen in literature and film today.

The Monk (first issued in three volumes in 1796) by Matthew Lewis (1775-1818) is one of the pinnacles of the Gothic literary movement.

Given the age of the work, The Monk is surprisingly highly readable yet today and Lewis opens the book with a stunning contrast. Crowds have gathered in Madrid for the third sermon of Ambrosio, the abbot of the Capuchin monastery. "All who have heard him are so delighted with his eloquence, that it is as difficult to obtain a place at church, as at the first representation of a new comedy... he is known through all the city by the name of The Man of Holiness."

The reader's first indication that Ambrosio is far less than the faultless person the general populace imagines him to be comes from Lewis' sly description of the man when first he appears to deliver his sermon and the narrator states: "there was a certain severity in his look and manner that inspired universal awe, and few could sustain the glance of his eye, at once fiery and penetrating."

Following an acclaimed homily to the standing-room-only crowd, Ambrosio "was no sooner alone, than he gave free loose to the indulgence of his vanity. When he remembered the enthusiasm which his discourse had excited, his heart swelled with rapture, and his imagination presented him with splendid visions of aggrandizement." But there are far worse qualities than pride lurking within the recesses of this holy man's being.

In the early pages of The Monk among the members of the crowd clamoring to hear Ambrosio speak is a young woman, Antonia. Having just arrived in Madrid with her aunt to seek financial succor from relatives, Antonia quickly comes to the attention of a cavalier, Don Lorenzo, who pledges to be of what assistance he can be to the young woman. Lorenzo finds the young woman's "artlessness" and "innocence" beguiling, but unfortunately, he is not alone in his attraction to the young woman. Another, however, does not have the same benevolent intent toward the woman as does Don Lorenzo.

The structure of The Monk is quite intriguing. Rather than present readers with an evil, hypocritical figure to begin with, Lewis makes Ambrosio a vulnerable character who suffers a fall--a fall reminiscent of that of Adam and Eve from Eden, complete with a central role for a poisonous viper slithering in the foliage. The source of Ambrosio's temptation comes, initially, from an odd choice--a novitiate at the monastery, Rosario. Generally keeping his face hidden, shy, reclusive, and at most times melancholy at best but intensely worshipful of Ambrosio, Lewis' revelation of the truth about Rosario and his eventual fate is both melodramatic and the kind of revelation that would have readers near the end of the eighteenth century shocked and in some cases appalled. Such elements, however, obviously led to the novel's great popularity and success, scandalous though it may have been.

Like the most successful of writer's today of thrillers, having totally captivated his reader with Ambrosio's opening collapse of values, Lewis shifts gears to a totally different set of characters and events to move his story forward. With the stated intent of revealing how Don Lorenzo's sister, Agnes, is installed in a convent, Lewis spends numerous pages providing his reader to a rambling but eventually connected set of exploits. At the outset is a narrative by Don Raymond, the Marquis de las Cisternas, who tells his companion, Lorenzo, about encountering sinister, murderous banditti waylaying innocent travelers. It is a tale of blood and intrigue that rivals, but predates Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn by 140 years. As extraordinary as this portion of Don Raymond's account is, Lewis has his narrator surpass himself with a whopper of a ghost story about a "bleeding nun" that walks the halls of a German castle in Lindenberg with a conclusion that is as likely to rivet and creep out readers as much today as it did in 1796.

In Chapter IV of The Monk (which begins Volume II) Lewis introduces the character of "the Great Mogul." This man of mystery with knowledge of the supernatural and "a burning cross impressed upon his brow" proves to be none other than the infamous "Wandering Jew" in one of the character's earliest appearances in literature. A figure from thirteenth century Christian folklore, the Wandering Jew, according to legend, taunted Jesus on the cross and in turn was cursed to forever wander the earth, incapable of dying or staying in any one place longer than a fortnight until the second coming of Christ.

With the life story of the "bleeding nun," Lewis' imaginary tale achieves new heights of explicitness for the times. Her's is an outrageous tale of sexual promiscuity and murder that includes criticism of and a condemnation of women being forced into convent life at too early of an age. Her tale is made all the more shocking by the fact that the phantom's actual name is Beatrice. Ironically, Beatrice means "she who blesses" and in Dante's The Divine Comedy it is Beatrice who guides the poet through his journey in the last four canti of Purgatory and through the work's final volume, Paradise. Lewis' Beatrice is far from a divine figure (in either her living or dead carnation), but without question the narrative from the "bleeding nun" certainly adds a chilling as well as titillating and scandalous element to The Monk.

In spite of its age, there is nothing dry about The Monk. Lewis keeps his plot, even when it appears to digress, interesting and along with the sex and immorality to be found in the story, frustrated romance plagues a couple of his male characters. In Chapter V Lewis heightens the novel's tension by focusing upon the evilness of a character that until that point is a minor player, the prioress of the abbey. While upping the character's importance to the story's plot, Lewis reveals that she is "haughty, inflexible, superstitious, and revengeful... Though naturally violent and severe, when her interests require it, she well knows how to assume an appearance of benignity."

Having kept Ambrosio off stage for nearly one hundred pages, Lewis resumes the monk's story and fall from grace exactly where he left off. It would be tempting to assume that Lewis merely has Ambrosio's fall from grace due to the woman who seduces him (which would reflect a typical misogynistic attitude of the times). However, Lewis properly assigns fault to the monk himself for adding "hypocrisy to perjury and incontinence." For a short while Ambrosio is a conflicted and tormented character, but lust quickly wins out. Worse, "frequent repetitions made him familiar with sin, and... The monk was glutted with the fullness of pleasure. A week had scarcely elapsed, before he was wearied of his paramour." Thus, Ambrosio begins to set his sights upon "another mistress with whom he could indulge his passions."

It is easy to see why The Monk generated as much scandal as it did. The sexuality and human evil depicted in the novel including cold-blooded murder, kidnapping, imprisonment, multi-layered deceit, rape, and even an attempted rape (of an unconscious virgin) had to have stretched the limits of tolerance beyond those for many of Lewis' contemporaries. Adding to this, the inclusion of supernatural forces at work successfully corrupting figures who are allegedly devoted to a religious life as well as attacks on church institutions would have been enough to tag Lewis and his novel as sacrilegious.

The influence of William Shakespeare is evident in The Monk. Lewis begins each of his chapters with quotations by famous writers to set the tone for each chapter and Shakespeare is quoted more than any other with tellingly appropriate quotes from Measure for Measure, Two Gentlemen from Verona, Macbeth, and Cymberline. Sprinkled throughout The Monk are ballads and pieces of verse written by Lewis used as diversions or as foreshadowing in the Shakespearean tradition. More importantly, however, Lewis is quick to adopt some of Shakespeare's more melodramatic and popular plot techniques including confusing the identity of the sex of characters, the appearance of vengeful or seemingly vengeful ghosts, and more deliberately, the utilization of "a juice extracted from certain herbs" that would make Friar Laurence from Romeo and Juliet proud; an extraction "which brings on the person who drinks it the exact image of death."

Lewis's plot in the last half of The Monk has as many twists and turns as the labyrinths in the caverns, dungeons, and prisons that ironically exist below the Capuchin monastery. The evil that Raymond encounters in his efforts to succor his love, Agnes, from the grasp of the hideous prioress and the convent as well as Lorenzo's efforts to claim the love of his life, Antonia, is as fraught with as much evil and corruption as the "emblems of death... skulls, shoulder-blades, thigh-bones, and other reliques of mortality... scattered upon the dewy ground" of the hidden sepulchers. Lewis's female characters suffer the greatest of horrendous treatment and fates although the male characters are not spared their agonies and torment, either, as they trek from one hellish ordeal to another.

In spite of the suffering and agony of many of the characters, the novel's explicitly, and the allegedly blasphemous elements of the work, Lewis does serve up a considerable dose of moral justice for two of the chief villains of the piece. Making an appearance twice in the book (and each time in a vastly different form), is Lucifer himself. In the final pages of The Monk Lewis gives readers one of the most memorable and gruesome representations of the Prince of Evil that readers are likely to ever encounter. Because of Ambrosio's repeated, conscious and depraved decisions and actions he places himself in an all but impossible position as he devolves from being a man of God to a reprobate who has to wrestle with still being capable of heavenly if not earthly salvation, or face an eternity of utter, irrevocable doom. Lewis saves some of his most startling and nastiest surprises for the reader (and Ambrosio as well) until the very end of the book when Lucifer himself reveals the true depths of evil to which Ambrosio has sunk because of the crimes he has committed. The monk's finale grim and apt fate brings the novel to an unforgettable, classic conclusion.

The Monk is an influential masterpiece of literature and the new edition just released by Valancourt is a must have/must read. Readers who pick up the work will find there are surprises galore and many hours of reading pleasure awaiting them in this far from moldy, readily accessible, influential, vastly entertaining, and extraordinary gothic masterpiece.

The Valancourt edition of THE MONK gives lovers of literature (finally!) a beautiful hardcover edition of the novel, the text of which is "reprinted from the British Library's copy of the first edition, published in three volumes by J. Bell of London in 1796" with "a reproduction of the original title page." Although THE MONK was originally published without illustrations, Valancourt has included six full-page engravings from later editions and a marvelous dust jacket with art work by M. S. Corley. A ten-page Introduction by the modern master of horror, Stephen King, is also included. This is a title not to be missed.