The Monk [Paperback]

Matthew G. Lewis (Author), John Berryman (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 13, 1994

The Monk shocked and titillated readers with its graphic portrayal of lust, sin, and violence when it was first published in 1796. A true classic of the Gothic novel, it has left an indelible mark on English literature and has influenced such eminent writers as Byron, Scott, Poe, Flaubert, Hawthorne, Emily Brontë, and many others over the past two centuries. Ambrosio is the abbot of the Capuchin monastery in Madrid. He is beloved by his flock, and his renowned piety has earned him the nickname The Man of Holiness. Yet beneath the veneer of this religious man lies a heart of hypocrisy; arrogant, licentious, and vengeful, he follows his sexual desires down the torturous path to ruin. Along the way, he encounters a naïve virgin who falls prey to his scheming, a baleful beauty fluent in witchcraft, the ghostly Bleeding Nun, an evil prioress, the Wandering Jew, and others.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The whole work is distinguished by the variety and impressiveness of its incidents; and the author every-where discovers an imagination rich, powerful, and fervid.” —Samuel Taylor Coleridge


From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

When Matthew Lewis's The Monk was published in 1796, readers were shocked by this gripping and horrific novel. Lewis's story, which drove the House of Commons—of which he was a member—to deem him licentious and perverse, follows the abbot Ambrosio as he is tempted into a world of incest, murder, and torture by a young girl who has concealed herself in his monastery disguised as a boy. As Ambrosio spirals into hell, the reader encounters an array of haunting characters: the innocent virgin, the Bleeding Nun, the Wandering Jew, an evil prioress, and Lucifer himself.

This Modern Library Paperback Classic, set from the unexpurgated first edition of 1796, brings to a new generation of readers a timeless classic of gothic fiction that has influenced writers from Byron and Emily Brontë to Poe and Hawthorne. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (January 13, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802151078
• ISBN-13: 978-0802151070
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,390,853 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most influential of the Gothic horror novels, February 19, 2003

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Monk (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

The Monk is perhaps the most significant and certainly the most controversial of the Gothic novels of the late 18th century. Amazingly, its author, nineteen-year-old Matthew Lewis, wrote the novel in a period of only six weeks. Although inspired by the work of Ann Radcliffe (among other Gothic writers), Lewis goes far beyond the sensibilities of his predecessors and does not choose to explain away the supernatural events fuelling this inflammatory novel. The Monk is a tale of human evil in its most vile form; the unspeakable acts described in these pages are committed by the supposedly most devout individuals in society. The Catholic Church was incensed with the novel's publication, and it is actually quite remarkable that The Monk was published at all and that its author faced nothing more dire than censorship and indignant protest as a consequence of it.

Ambrosio is the most celebrated, revered monk in Madrid (in the era of the infamous Spanish Inquisition) - his sermons attract crowds far too large to gain admittance to the sanctuary, and everyone holds him up as a veritable saint walking the earth. His fall from grace is precipitous indeed. Secretly, Ambrosio is vain and proud, blissfully assured of his own near-perfection. At the first temptation of lust, however, this holy man reveals himself to be the ultimate hypocrite, giving in rather easily to the type of desire he rails against each Sunday. After learning that his friend Rosario is in fact a lovely woman in disguise named Matilda, he revels in the love she declares for him and quickly becomes her secret lover. Quickly and ever more thoroughly consumed by his new-found passion and carnal lasciviousness, he grows tired of the ever-willing Matilda and turns his perverted eye toward the sweet and wholly innocent young Antonia. Through the witchcraft of Matilda, he comes to consort with demons in the sacred crypts underneath the abbey itself, giving up his morality and piety in the blind pursuit of actions worse than mere rape.

Ambrosio is not the only hypocritical, secretly sinful church official in Madrid, however. The prioress of the convent bordering the abbey is a sickeningly cruel and spiteful agent of perfidy herself. When she discovers that Agnes, one of her novitiates, is pregnant, she is so mortified at the impending shame this fact will bring down upon her and the convent that she resorts to the most barbaric of punishments for the poor and pitiable young lady. While her crimes do not quite exceed those of Ambrosio, the devastating consequences of her sinful acts result in long-lasting, deeply grievous repercussions.

The novel takes a while to really come together. After seeing Ambrosio in his publicly sanctimonious guise and watching his pitiful descent into the passions and lusts inspired by Matilda, we spend a great deal of time becoming acquainted with Antonia, Agnes, and the gentlemen who love them and will eventually fight bravely to try and save them both physically and morally from their sad fates. The story of the Bleeding Nun apparition is an important part of this section of the book and gives the reader his first real introduction to the supernatural aspects of the story. It is almost possible to forget about Ambrosio completely for a time; when he returns to the story, however, he commits unspeakable acts and profanes the very name of the God he supposedly serves in such excess that he earns a permanent spot in the annals of literature's most despicable villains.

It is in the crypts, among the moldering corpses of the dead, that the most blasphemous acts take place. Antonia's fate is quite horrible, but it is actually Agnes' tale of woe that takes the reader to the most horrific of extremes. Just when the worst seems to be over, we learn in graphic detail the almost unimaginable extent of the ordeal suffered by Agnes and her innocent child - the tale is quite gruesome even by today's standards, almost unimaginably so by those of Lewis' own time. The suffering of the innocent Agnes and Antonia is, in my opinion, unparalleled in the realm of Gothic horror.

Even some critics who are less than found of the Gothic horror genre have embraced this novel, partly because it does distinguish itself from the more Romantic writings of an author such as Ann Radcliffe. As such, it seems less pretentious and much more visceral than the typical Gothic tome. Lewis holds nothing back in presenting his portrayal of evil in the hearts of men and women. There is a love story aspect to the events surrounding Agnes and Antonia, but the author does not indulge in flowery descriptions of love, nor does he concern himself with rapturous expositions on the beauty of nature. There is very little of beauty to be found in these pages at all, and what innocence exists is ultimately lost at the hands of corrupted servants of God. With such complexity underlying the plot, The Monk is open to a number of interpretations, and its microscopic portrayal of evil's power to overcome the best of men and women continues to fascinate and leave a lasting impression on one generation of readers after another. Even in our own time, The Monk is more than capable of shocking the reader with its unbridled revelations.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ultimate Gothic Classic, April 13, 2002

By 

"botatoe" (Albany, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Monk (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

Matthew Lewis wrote "The Monk" in ten short weeks at the age of nineteen. Immediately the subject of controversy upon its publication in 1796, Lewis was prosecuted and subsequent editions of the book were heavily censored. Coleridge described it as blasphemous, "a romance, which if a parent saw it in the hands of a son or daughter, he might reasonably turn pale." Yet, "The Monk" was so popular that its author became a minor celebrity-coming to be known as "Monk" Lewis--and Sir Walter Scott prounounced that "it seemed to create an epoch in our literature." And whether "The Monk" truly created an epoch in English literature, or merely marked the early apogee of a genre, it stands as a stunning example of the Gothic novel.

"The Monk" tells the story of Ambrosio, the ostensibly pious and deeply revered Abbot of the Capuchin monastery in Madrid, and his dark fall from grace. It is a novel which unravels, at times, like the "Arabian Nights", stories within stories, a series of digressions, the plot driven by love and lust, temptations and spectres, and, ultimately, rape, murder and incest. It is sharply anti-Catholic, if not anti-clerical, in tone, Ambrosio and most of its other religious characters being profane, murderous, self-centered hypocrites cloaked in displays of public piety. And while it sometimes seems critical of superstition, "The Monk" is replete with Mephistophelian bargains, supernatural events, appartions, and spectres, as well as entombment and dark forebodings of mystery and evil. It is, in short, a stunningly entertaining, albeit typically heavy-handed, Gothic novel, perhaps the ultimate classic of the genre.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's still shocking, March 24, 2003

By 

JR Pinto (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Monk (Oxford World's Classics) (Hardcover)

Another reviewer was right: DON'T READ THE STEPHEN KING INTRODUCTION BEFORE YOU READ THE BOOK! If you do, it will give the whole plot away.

Although not as famous as Dracula or Frankenstein, this is a must-read for any serious Gothic horror fan. One of the things that makes this book different is that (unlike Dracula) there is no proactive villain. We kind of admire Dracula because (pardon the expression) he makes no bones about what he is. Dracula is a villain and he's OK with that. The Monk is a re-active villain. His crime is that he's a hypocrite. He finds himself committing crimes because he is week, not strong. Therefore, one cannot admire the Monk the way we can admire Frankenstein's monster.

It is surprising how shocking the novel is, considering when it was written. It has a very cynical - some would say "modern" - assessment of people. The Monk's main motivation is sex. Actually, sex is everywhere in the book. It is obvious that it was written by a twenty-year-old who could not, even for a moment, imagine a vow of celibacy. As the first novel of a boy barely out of his teens, Lewis pulls out all the stops as only a novice can - even bringing in the Devil himself, at the end, to dispence justice.

The plot is convoluted beyond belief, sub-plots and backstories abound, as well as other outmoded conventions of Gothic literature. That having been said, this a briskly-written book. It never bores. Despite being over two-hundred years old, it is very accessible and sufficiently gruesome to interest any modern horror fan. As for being anti-Catholic, I think "Monk" Lewis ends up sounding surprisingly pious. By condeming the hypocrites, he affirms the values they are supposed to represent.