Castle of Otranto Preface Analysis

Horace Walpole (1717-1797) invented the Gothic novel in his attempt to blend wildness and imagination of the old romance, in his own words "an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern'' in one step altogether, the Castle of Otranto. A novel he claimed to have written immediately after being inspired by a dream, "I waked one morning...from a dream, of which all I could recover was, that I had thought myself in an ancient castle...I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening I sat down and began to write" (Letter, 9th march 1765). On the other hand many would more quickly agree that the writing of this novel was a mere `specialized development of his taste as a virtuoso and collector' (Holt et al. 230). All the same none would disagree that this novel is indeed a page turner, and this is noticeable even in his Preface to the First Novel. This three page preliminary statement serves two minor but significant roles for Walpole within and without the context of the novel. The first is foretelling his readers the flow of his novel and what they should expect. He does this by means of hinting the plot and sharing some elements of mystery, and Gothic elements of the novel. The second role of the preface was however more towards his disadvantage, although I would imagine he never intended this to happen. The preface served as a frame in which Walpole disguises himself as an objective, third party translator, or he is also known as William Marshal. This same frame which served him benefits also proved to be a large indicator that the novel could not have been written two hundred years ago. It had all the key aspect of many eighteenth and nineteenth century novels, authenticity, authority, antiquity and art...

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... rather interesting foretelling of the story, whilst still not giving too much of it away. The second preface was written later on and included in this edition but does hold much significance in my point of view as the first. It is nothing more than a literary preface in which he does not disguise himself any longer, rather he admits openly that he is the writer of the novel. To wrap up is a quip from a reviewer from The Critical Review, "the anonymously published novel is the work of a modern, not medieval, author."

Works cited;

Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto. London: Collier Books, 1969.

Hawthorn, Jeremy. Studying the Novel: an introduction. London: New York, 1992.

A review of "Castle of Otranto: A story," in The Critical Review, Vol.XIX, January, 1765,pp 50-51.

Beers, Henry A. a History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, 1899.