Reading Gogol’s Diary of a Madman is like stepping onto what you think is a quaint cobbled path, only to find it’s actually a rickety conveyor belt leading straight into the abyss. One minute, you’re chuckling at a disgruntled clerk grumbling about his superiors, and the next, you’re clutching your head, wondering if you, too, have started … Continue reading Bureaucracy, Bedlam, and Barking Mad Dogs: A Descent into Diary of a Madman
Tag: gothic
Echoes of Forbidden Desire: A Gothic Connection
One novel to concentrate on, however, an interesting link to another. The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter, a novella co-authored by Ambrose Bierce and Adolphe Danziger de Castro, presents itself as a brooding, gothic exploration of forbidden love, morality, and tragedy. However, upon closer inspection, it reveals itself as a delightful conundrum of overwrought melodrama, … Continue reading Echoes of Forbidden Desire: A Gothic Connection
Delightfully Distracting: Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer
Melmoth the Wanderer, the literary equivalent of a gothic cathedral designed by an architect who kept losing his blueprints and decided to wing it instead. Charles Maturin’s 1820 novel is a bewildering masterpiece, a labyrinthine fever dream that feels like it was concocted during an especially eccentric séance. Strap in for a rollercoaster ride through … Continue reading Delightfully Distracting: Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer
Mesmerism and Mortality: Edgar Allan Poe’s Macabre Exploration in ‘The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar’
Imagine the audacious organisers of a Hen or Stag party, gleefully arranging for a Hypnotist solely to amuse themselves at the expense of their inebriated guests, who may be compelled to cluck like chickens or strike poses reminiscent of tea pots. The absurdity of such a spectacle is almost Poe-esque in its dark humour, a … Continue reading Mesmerism and Mortality: Edgar Allan Poe’s Macabre Exploration in ‘The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar’
The Monstrous Monk: Lewis’ Controversial Masterpiece
Matthew Gregory Lewis' The Monk is a Gothic novel that, upon its publication in 1796, caused such a ruckus that it made the scandals of 18th-century high society look like polite tea parties. Picture this: a book that combines lust, murder, and demonic pacts, all wrapped up in the not-so-holy setting of a monastery - monks behaving … Continue reading The Monstrous Monk: Lewis’ Controversial Masterpiece
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