Horace Warpole’s The Castle of Otranto Compared to Oedipus Rex

Romance, murder, superstition, ghosts, darkness, religion, and castles are some of the features of the paradigm of the Gothic genre in literature. Horace Warpole’s The Castle of Otranto was the first Gothic novel and the above aspects, which he used as tropes, defines the genre. The story of The Castle of Otranto follows the downfall of the protagonist, Manfred, beginning with him as a Prince, then having to sign his abdication and working at a convent. Prophecy, incest, irony, usurpation, dethroning, and murder are some of the themes that appear in both Horace Warpole’s The Castle of Otranto and Oedipus The King by Sophocles. The Castle of Otranto opens with the death of Conrad, the male heir and son of Prince Manfred, and thus begins Manfred’s blind tyranny to attempt to keep the throne. Within this narrative there are echoes and direct parallels to the story Oedipus The King, thus The Castle of Otranto a rewriting of the Oedipus story.

Dramatic irony is pivotal to the success of a tragedy, as it leaves the characters completely blind to the truth which the reader or audience already knows. In The Castle of Otranto, there are moments of dramatic irony, situational irony, and verbal irony. In the very beginning of the play the reader assumes that Conrad, Manfred’s son and future heir, will have a big part in the narrative. The twist is that Conrad dies before he even utters a word in a story that initially alludes to be about him. He does make it to the nuptials that Manfred has hastened upon and instead meets his doom. Another instance of dramatic irony is when he follows who he believes to be Isabella with Theodore. Manfred makes an ill-fated mistake when he decides to draw his dagger on someone who turns out to be ...

... middle of paper ...

...ing out of rage.

The parallels that run between The Castle of Otranto and Oedipus The King, point to perhaps to Warpole being inspired by the ancient Greek play. Warpole conveys close connections to Sophocles’ work, and the reader hears the echoes and similarities from Sophocles’ Greek play, Oedipus The King. Manfred and Oedipus’ actions cause their downfall due to their blind rage and tyranny. The men attempt to evade fate, but there is no escaping the fate that has been prophesized for Manfred and Oedipus. They are both left with nothing and carry a burden of guilt and shame for the rest of their lives.

Works Cited

Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto. New York: Dover Publications, 1966. Epub.

Lawall, Sarah N. “Oedipus the King.” The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 612-652. Print.