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'Look, my lord! See heaven itself declares against your impious
intentions!' The Castle of Otranto (1764) is the first supernatural
English novel and one of the most influential works of Gothic
fiction. It inaugurated a literary genre that will be forever
associated with the effects that Walpole pioneered. Professing to
be a translation of a mysterious Italian tale from the darkest
Middle Ages, the novel tells of Manfred, prince of Otranto, whose
fear of an ancient prophecy sets him on a course of destruction.
After the grotesque death of his only son, Conrad, on his wedding
day, Manfred determines to marry the bride-to-be. The virgin
Isabella flees through a castle riddled with secret passages.
Chilling coincidences, ghostly visitations, arcane revelations, and
violent combat combine in a heady mix that terrified the novel's
first readers. In this new edition Nick Groom examines the reasons
for its extraordinary impact and the Gothic culture from which it
sprang. The Castle of Otranto was a game-changer, and Walpole the
writer who paved the way for modern horror exponents. ABOUT THE
SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made
available the widest range of literature from around the globe.
Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship,
providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable
features, including expert introductions by leading authorities,
helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for
further study, and much more.
'Fascinating.... Wonderfully exhilarating.' Mail on Sunday An
engaging, original and radical reassessment of J.R.R. Tolkien,
revealing how his visionary creation of Middle-Earth is more
relevant now than ever before. What is it about Middle-Earth and
its inhabitants that has captured the imagination of millions of
people around the world? And why does Tolkien's visionary creation
continue to fascinate and inspire us eighty-five years on from its
first appearance? Beginning with Tolkien's earliest influences and
drawing on key moments from his life, Twenty-First-Century Tolkien
is an engaging and radical reinterpretation of the beloved author's
work. Not only does it trace the genesis of the original books, it
also explores the later adaptations and reworkings that cemented
his reputation as a cultural phenomenon, including Peter Jackson's
blockbuster films of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and the
highly anticipated TV series The Rings of Power. Delving deep into
topics such as friendship, failure, the environment, diversity, and
Tolkien's place in a post-Covid age, Nick Groom takes us on an
unexpected journey through Tolkien's world, revealing how it is
more relevant now than ever before.
By the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way
through the window-shutters, I beheld the wretch-the miserable
monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and
his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws
opened... Frankenstein is the most celebrated horror story ever
written. It tells the dreadful tale of Victor Frankenstein, a
visionary young student of natural philosophy, who discovers the
secret of life. In the grip of his obsession he constructs a being
from dead body parts, and animates this creature. The results, for
Victor and for his family, are catastrophic. Written when Mary
Shelley was just eighteen, Frankenstein was inspired by the ghost
stories and vogue for Gothic literature that fascinated the
Romantic writers of her time. She transformed these supernatural
elements an epic parable that warned against the threats to
humanity posed by accelerating technological progress. Published
for the 200th anniversary, this edition, based on the original 1818
text, explains in detail the turbulent intellectual context in
which Shelley was writing, and also investigates how her novel has
since become a byword for controversial practices in science and
medicine, from manipulating ecosystems to vivisection and genetic
modification. As an iconic study of power, creativity, and,
ultimately, what it is to be human, Frankenstein continues to shape
our thinking in profound ways to this day.
First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
An authoritative new history of the vampire, two hundred years
after it first appeared on the literary scene Published to mark the
bicentenary of John Polidori's publication of The Vampyre, Nick
Groom's detailed new account illuminates the complex history of the
iconic creature. The vampire first came to public prominence in the
early eighteenth century, when Enlightenment science collided with
Eastern European folklore and apparently verified outbreaks of
vampirism, capturing the attention of medical researchers,
political commentators, social theorists, theologians, and
philosophers. Groom accordingly traces the vampire from its role as
a monster embodying humankind's fears, to that of an unlikely hero
for the marginalized and excluded in the twenty-first century.
Drawing on literary and artistic representations, as well as
medical, forensic, empirical, and sociopolitical perspectives, this
rich and eerie history presents the vampire as a strikingly complex
being that has been used to express the traumas and contradictions
of the human condition.
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The Monk (Paperback)
Matthew Lewis; Edited by Nick Groom
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R287
R207
Discovery Miles 2 070
Save R80 (28%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'He was deaf to the murmurs of conscience, and resolved to satisfy
his desires at any price.' The Monk (1796) is a sensational story
of temptation and depravity, a masterpiece of Gothic fiction and
the first horror novel in English literature. The respected monk
Ambrosio, the Abbot of a Capuchin monastery in Madrid, is
overwhelmed with desire for a young girl; once having abandoned his
monastic vows he begins a terrible descent into immorality and
violence. His appalling fall from grace embraces blasphemy, black
magic, torture, rape, and murder, and places his very soul in
jeopardy. Lewis's extraordinary tale drew on folklore, legendary
ghost stories, and contemporary dread inspired by the terrors of
the French Revolution. Its excesses shocked the reading public and
it was condemned as obscene. The novel continues to beguile and
shock readers today with its gruesome catalogue of iniquities,
while at the same time giving a profound insight into the deep
anxieties experienced by British citizens during one of the most
turbulent periods in the nation's history. ABOUT THE SERIES: For
over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the
widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable
volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the
most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features,
including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful
notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further
study, and much more.
'Fascinating.... Wonderfully exhilarating.' Mail on Sunday An
engaging, original and radical reassessment of J.R.R. Tolkien,
revealing how his visionary creation of Middle-Earth is more
relevant now than ever before. What is it about Middle-Earth and
its inhabitants that has captured the imagination of millions of
people around the world? And why does Tolkien's visionary creation
continue to fascinate and inspire us eighty-five years on from its
first appearance? Beginning with Tolkien's earliest influences and
drawing on key moments from his life, Twenty-First-Century Tolkien
is an engaging and radical reinterpretation of the beloved author's
work. Not only does it trace the genesis of the original books, it
also explores the later adaptations and reworkings that cemented
his reputation as a cultural phenomenon, including Peter Jackson's
blockbuster films of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and the
highly anticipated TV series The Rings of Power. Delving deep into
topics such as friendship, failure, the environment, diversity, and
Tolkien's place in a post-Covid age, Nick Groom takes us on an
unexpected journey through Tolkien's world, revealing how it is
more relevant now than ever before.
Shakespeare's absolute pre-eminence is simply unparalleled. His
plays pack theatres and provide Hollywood with block-buster
scripts; his works inspire mountains of scholarship and criticism
every year. He has given us many of the very words we speak, and
even some of the thoughts we think. Nick Groom and Piero explore
how Shakespeare became so famous and influential, and why he is
still widely considered the greatest writer ever. They investigate
how the Bard has been worshiped at different times and in different
places, used and abused to cultural and political ends, and the
roots of intense controversies which have surrounded his work. Much
more than a biography or a guide to his plays and sonnets,
Introducing Shakespeare is a tour through the world of Will and
concludes that even after centuries, Shakespeare remains the
battlefield on which our very comprehension of humanity is being
fought out.
Shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award and runner-up
for Countryfile Book of the Year. For millennia, the passing
seasons and their rhythms have marked our progress through the
year. But what do they mean to us now that we lead increasingly
atomised and urban lives and our weather becomes ever more
unpredictable or extreme? In this splendidly rich and lyrical
celebration of the English seasons, Nick Groom investigates the
trove of strange folklore and often stranger fact they have
accumulated over the centuries and shows how tradition and our
links with nature still have a vital role to play in all our lives.
'Among his associates no one loved him, many disliked him, and more
feared him.' Father Schedoni is enlisted by the imperious Marchesa
di Vivaldi to prevent her son from marrying the beautiful Ellena.
Schedoni has no scruples in kidnapping Ellena and in undertaking
whatever villainy will further his own ends. His menacing presence
dominates a gripping tale of love and betrayal, abduction and
assassination, and incarceration in the dreadful dungeons of the
Inquisition. Uncertainty and doubt lie everywhere, in Radcliffe's
last and most unnerving novel. Ann Radcliffe defined the 'terror'
genre of writing and helped to establish the Gothic novel,
thrilling readers with her mysterious plots and eerie effects. In
The Italian she rejects the rational certainties of the
Enlightenment for a more ambiguous and unsettling account of what
it is to be an individual - particularly a woman - in a culture
haunted by history and dominated by institutional power. This new
edition includes Radcliffe's important essay 'On the Supernatural
in Poetry', in which she distinguishes terror writing from horror.
The Gothic is wildly diverse. It can refer to ecclesiastical
architecture, supernatural fiction, cult horror films, and a
distinctive style of rock music. It has influenced political
theorists and social reformers, as well as Victorian home decor and
contemporary fashion. Nick Groom shows how the Gothic has come to
encompass so many meanings by telling the story of the Gothic from
the ancient tribe who sacked Rome to the alternative subculture of
the present day. This unique Very Short Introduction reveals that
the Gothic has predominantly been a way of understanding and
responding to the past. Time after time, the Gothic has been
invoked in order to reveal what lies behind conventional history.
It is a way of disclosing secrets, whether in the constitutional
politics of seventeenth-century England or the racial politics of
the United States. While contexts change, the Gothic perpetually
regards the past with fascination, both yearning and horrified. It
reminds us that neither societies nor individuals can escape the
consequences of their actions. The anatomy of the Gothic is richly
complex and perversely contradictory, and so the thirteen chapters
here range deliberately widely. This is the first time that the
entire story of the Gothic has been written as a continuous
history: from the historians of late antiquity to the gardens of
Georgian England, from the mediaeval cult of the macabre to German
Expressionist cinema, from Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy to American
consumer society, from folk ballads to vampires, from the past to
the present. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series
from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost
every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to
get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine
facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make
interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Known the world over as a symbol of the United Kingdom, the Union
Jack is an intricate construction based on the crosses of St
George, St Andrew and St Patrick. Nick Groom traces its long and
fascinating past, from the development of the Royal Standard and
seventeenth-century clashes over the precise balance of the English
and Scottish elements of the first Union Jack to the modern
controversies over the flag as a symbol of empire and its
exploitation by ultra-rightwing political groups. The Union Jack is
the first history of the icon used by everyone from the royalty to
the military, pop stars and celebrities.
By the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way
through the window-shutters, I beheld the wretch-the miserable
monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and
his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws
opened...' Frankenstein is the most celebrated horror story ever
written. It tells the dreadful tale of Victor Frankenstein, a
visionary young student of natural philosophy, who discovers the
secret of life. In the grip of his obsession he constructs a being
from dead body parts, and animates this creature. The results, for
Victor and for his family, are catastrophic. Written when Mary
Shelley was just eighteen, Frankenstein was inspired by the ghost
stories and vogue for Gothic literature that fascinated the
Romantic writers of her time. She transformed these supernatural
elements an epic parable that warned against the threats to
humanity posed by accelerating technological progress. Published
for the 200th anniversary, this edition, based on the original 1818
text, explains in detail the turbulent intellectual context in
which Shelley was writing, and also investigates how her novel has
since become a byword for controversial practices in science and
medicine, from manipulating ecosystems to vivisection and genetic
modification. As an iconic study of power, creativity, and,
ultimately, what it is to be human, Frankenstein continues to shape
our thinking in profound ways to this day.
Percy's Reliques (1765) is the seminal collection of historical and lyrical ballads that defined English literature at the end of the eighteenth century. It dramatically influenced Wordsworth and Coleridge, Walter Scott, and Lewis Carroll. This is the first study of Percy's Reliques. It examines Percy's working methods in contexts such as Englishness, cannibalism, and literary forgery.
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