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Fantasy Fan, v. 1, issue 8, April 1934
Page 125
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April, 1934, THE FANTASY FAN 125 SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE Part Seven by H. P. Lovecraft (Copyright 1927 by W. Paul Cook) III. The Early Gothic Novel The shadow-haunted landscapes of Ossian, the chaotic visions of William Blake, the grotesque witch-dances in Burns's Tam O'Shanter, the sinister daemonism of Coleridge's Christabel and Ancient Mariner, the ghostly charm of James Hogg's Kilmeny, and the more restrained approaches to cosmic horror tn Lamia and many of Keats's other poems, are typical British illustrations of the advent of the weird to formal literature. Our Teutonic cousins of the continent were equally receptive to the rising flood, and Burger's Wild Huntsman and the even more famous daemon-bridegroom ballad of Lenore --both imitated in English by Scott, whose respect for the supernatural was always great--are only a taste of the eerie wealth which German song had commenced to provide. Thomas Moore adapted from such sources the legend of the ghoulish statue-bride (later used by Proper Merimee in The Venus of Ille, and traceable back to great antiquity) which echoes so shiveringly in his ballad of The Ring; whilst Goethe's deathless masterpiece Faust, crossing from mere balladry into the classic, cosmic tragedy of the ages, may be held as the ultimate height to which this German poetic impulse arose. But it remained for a very sprightly and worldly Englishman--none other than Horace Walpole himself--to give the growing impulse definite shape and become the actual founder of the literary horror-story as a permanent form. Fond of mediaevial romance and mystery as a dilettante's diversion, and with a quaintly imitated Gothic castle as his abode at Strawberry Hill, Walpole in 1764 published The Castle of Otranto, a tale of the supernatural which, though thoroughly unconvincing and mediocre in itself, was destined to exert an almost unparallelled influence on the literature of the weird. First venturing it only as a 'translation' by one "William Marshal, gent." from the Italian of a mythical "Onuphrio Muralto," the author later acknowledged his connection with the book and took pleasure in its wide and instantaneous popularity--a popularity which extended to many editors, early dramatizations, and wholesale imitation both in England an din Germany. The story--tedious, artificial, and melodramatic--is further impaired by a brisk and prosaic style whose urbane sprightliness nowhere permits the creation of a truly weird atmosphere. It tells of Manfred, an unscrupulous and usurping prince determined to found a line, who after the mysterious sudden death of his only son, Conrad, on the latter's bridal morn, attempts to put away his wife Hippolita and wed the lady destined for the unfortunate youth--the lad, by the way, having been crushed by the preternatural fall of a gigantic helmet in the castle courtyard. Isabella, the widowed bride, flees from this design; and encounters in subterranean crypts beneath the castle a noble young preserver,
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April, 1934, THE FANTASY FAN 125 SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE Part Seven by H. P. Lovecraft (Copyright 1927 by W. Paul Cook) III. The Early Gothic Novel The shadow-haunted landscapes of Ossian, the chaotic visions of William Blake, the grotesque witch-dances in Burns's Tam O'Shanter, the sinister daemonism of Coleridge's Christabel and Ancient Mariner, the ghostly charm of James Hogg's Kilmeny, and the more restrained approaches to cosmic horror tn Lamia and many of Keats's other poems, are typical British illustrations of the advent of the weird to formal literature. Our Teutonic cousins of the continent were equally receptive to the rising flood, and Burger's Wild Huntsman and the even more famous daemon-bridegroom ballad of Lenore --both imitated in English by Scott, whose respect for the supernatural was always great--are only a taste of the eerie wealth which German song had commenced to provide. Thomas Moore adapted from such sources the legend of the ghoulish statue-bride (later used by Proper Merimee in The Venus of Ille, and traceable back to great antiquity) which echoes so shiveringly in his ballad of The Ring; whilst Goethe's deathless masterpiece Faust, crossing from mere balladry into the classic, cosmic tragedy of the ages, may be held as the ultimate height to which this German poetic impulse arose. But it remained for a very sprightly and worldly Englishman--none other than Horace Walpole himself--to give the growing impulse definite shape and become the actual founder of the literary horror-story as a permanent form. Fond of mediaevial romance and mystery as a dilettante's diversion, and with a quaintly imitated Gothic castle as his abode at Strawberry Hill, Walpole in 1764 published The Castle of Otranto, a tale of the supernatural which, though thoroughly unconvincing and mediocre in itself, was destined to exert an almost unparallelled influence on the literature of the weird. First venturing it only as a 'translation' by one "William Marshal, gent." from the Italian of a mythical "Onuphrio Muralto," the author later acknowledged his connection with the book and took pleasure in its wide and instantaneous popularity--a popularity which extended to many editors, early dramatizations, and wholesale imitation both in England an din Germany. The story--tedious, artificial, and melodramatic--is further impaired by a brisk and prosaic style whose urbane sprightliness nowhere permits the creation of a truly weird atmosphere. It tells of Manfred, an unscrupulous and usurping prince determined to found a line, who after the mysterious sudden death of his only son, Conrad, on the latter's bridal morn, attempts to put away his wife Hippolita and wed the lady destined for the unfortunate youth--the lad, by the way, having been crushed by the preternatural fall of a gigantic helmet in the castle courtyard. Isabella, the widowed bride, flees from this design; and encounters in subterranean crypts beneath the castle a noble young preserver,
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