Five-minute digest
The Castle of Otranto
Summary
The Castle of Otranto, published in 1764, is considered the first Gothic novel. Horace Walpole first presented it as a translation of an Italian manuscript printed in Naples in 1529, supposedly discovered in an old Catholic family library in the north of England; in the second edition he admitted his authorship and explained that he had tried to blend ancient romance, with its marvels, and modern fiction, with its natural characters. The story takes place in the castle of Otranto in southern Italy in the age of the Crusades. Manfred, the prince, is anxious to marry his sickly son Conrad to Isabella, daughter of the Marquis of Vicenza, because an ancient prophecy has declared that the castle shall pass from the present family whenever the real owner grows too large to inhabit it. On the wedding day Conrad is crushed to death by an enormous helmet that falls from the sky, a huge copy of the helmet on the statue of Alfonso the Good, a former prince. Desperate to secure an heir, Manfred decides to divorce his virtuous wife Hippolita and marry Isabella himself. Isabella flees through underground passages and is helped by Theodore, a young peasant who resembles the statue of Alfonso. A series of marvels follows: a portrait sighs and walks, a giant armored foot and hand appear, a statue's nose bleeds, and a mysterious knight arrives with a gigantic sword. Father Jerome, a friar, turns out to be Theodore's father, the Count of Falconara. Manfred, mistaking his own daughter Matilda for Isabella in the dark, stabs her in the church, and she dies. The walls of the castle collapse, the enormous figure of Alfonso appears and declares Theodore the true heir, and Manfred confesses that his grandfather usurped the throne by poisoning Alfonso. Manfred and Hippolita retire to convents, and Theodore marries Isabella. Brief and melodramatic, the novel founded a genre that leads to Mary Shelley, Poe and Bram Stoker.
Top Lessons
The birth of the Gothic
Walpole created a genre of castles, ghosts and terror.
Sins of the fathers
Manfred suffers for his grandfather's crime.
Tyranny
Manfred's ambition to keep his usurped title destroys his family.
Verified Quotes
“he beheld his child dashed to pieces, and almost buried under an enormous helmet, an hundred times more large than any casque ever made for human being”
“Behold in Theodore the true heir of Alfonso!” said the vision”