Neil Bowen on
The first Gothic novel: Walpole’s ‘The Castle of Otranto’ [1764]
One problem with the term ‘Gothic’ is its shape-shifting, chameleon nature. Early Gothic novels are quite different to ‘Frankenstein’, for instance, and by the Victorian age Gothic has transformed again. Dr Wright suggests that a useful way of defining the literature is through identifying key features which remain constant:
‘The fact that Walpole also claimed that it was a translation in the first edition is really significant (this was not true). It introduces one of the most stable Gothic tropes that persists to this day; it is present in ‘The Castle of Otranto’, Ann Radcliffe's ‘The Romance of the Forest’ and ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’. In the nineteenth century, ‘Frankenstein’ may not seem to be about a manuscript, but consider the epistolary nature of the novel. It is, in essence, a series of letters, as ‘Dracula’ much later is a series of documents . . . So translating, deciphering a tale that someone else has told at an earlier date, becomes crucial to the Gothic . . .’