Melmoth the Wanderer


Book Description




Melmoth the Wanderer


Book Description

Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) is a novel by Charles Maturin. Written toward the end of Maturin’s life, Melmoth the Wanderer was the author’s fifth and most successful novel. Inspired by the story of the Wandering Jew and the Faustian legend, the novel is a powerful Gothic romance divided into nested stories, each one delving deeper into the mystery of Melmoth’s life. Often interpreted for its criticisms of 19th century Britain and the Catholic Church, Melmoth the Wanderer is considered one of the greatest novels of the Romantic era. Following a lead from a story told at his uncle’s funeral, John Melmoth, a student from Dublin, begins an obsessive search into his family’s mysterious past. Little is known about the man called “Melmoth the Traveller.” A portrait dated 1646 suggests that he has been dead for over a century. Despite this, he discovers a manuscript from a stranger named Stanton who claims to have seen Melmoth on several occasions over the past few decades. John tracks him down and finds him at a mental institution, where he was placed when his obsession with Melmoth was deemed insanity. Disturbed, John burns the portrait and attempts to put his questions behind him. Soon, he begins having visions of his own. Melmoth the Wanderer is a story of mystery and terror that engages with timeless themes of faith, fantasy, and the thin line between dreams and life. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer is a classic of Irish literature reimagined for modern readers.




Melmoth the Wanderer 1820


Book Description

When a young Dublin student goes to pay his last respects to his dying uncle, he never imagines that he might chance upon a terrifying family secret. Who is the sinister old man in the portrait and why is his uncle so anxious for him to burn it? Why is the Spanish man who saves him from drowning so frightened when he hears the name Melmoth? As he digs deeper into the mystery, an intricate and blood-chilling story begins to unfold. For the past two hundred years, the accursed Melmoth has been searching desperately for an escape from the infernal bargain he once made. Melmoth has traversed the globe leaving destruction and misery in his wake, from Inquisition-era Spain to a remote island in the Indian Ocean - and there have been recent sightings of him in County Wicklow, where our narrator is still piecing the story together. This Victorian classic has captured the imaginations of readers since 1820 and inspired numerous other gothic masterpieces, including Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Sarah Perry's novel Melmoth.




Melmoth


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The Gothic Wanderer


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The Gothic Wanderer Rises Eternal in Popular Literature From the horrors of sixteenth century Italian castles to twenty-first century plagues, from the French Revolution to the liberation of Libya, Tyler R. Tichelaar takes readers on far more than a journey through literary history. The Gothic Wanderer is an exploration of man's deepest fears, his eff orts to rise above them for the last two centuries, and how he may be on the brink finally of succeeding. Tichelaar examines the figure of the Gothic wanderer in such well-known Gothic novels as "The Mysteries of Udolpho," "Frankenstein," and "Dracula," as well as lesser known works like Fanny Burney's "The Wanderer," Mary Shelley's "The Last Man," and Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "Zanoni." He also finds surprising Gothic elements in classics like Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" and Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Tarzan of the Apes." From Matthew Lewis' "The Monk" to Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight," Tichelaar explores a literary tradition whose characters refl ect our greatest fears and deepest hopes. Readers will find here the revelation that not only are we all Gothic wanderers--but we are so only by our own choosing. Acclaim for "The Gothic Wanderer" ""The Gothic Wanderer" shows us the importance of its title figure in helping us to see our own imperfections and our own sometimes contradictory yearnings to be both unique and yet a part of a society. The reader is in for an insightful treat." --Diana DeLuca, Ph.D. and author of Extraordinary Things "Make no mistake about it, The Gothic Wanderer is an important, well researched and comprehensive treatise on some of the world's finest literature." --Michael Willey, author of Ojisan Zanoni Foreword by Marie Mulvey-Roberts, Ph.D. Learn more at www.GothicWanderer.com From Modern History Press www.ModernHistoryPress.com Literary Criticism: Gothing & Romance Literary Criticism: European - General










Melmoth the Wanderer


Book Description

The Gothic novel of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries often feature charismatic villains and brooding Byronic heroes. Melmoth, the mysterious title character, is both of these in this, Maturin’s best-known work and one of the last of the classic Gothic novels. Melmoth the Wanderer is a slow-burning supernatural story of suspense and horror that follows the menacing, ageless Wanderer through a complex web of nested stories within stories, told by his would-be victims and others who have crossed his path over his unnaturally long life. Along the way the tales take us from nineteenth-century Ireland, to utopian Indian islands, to a romantic castle in the seventeenth-century English countryside, to Spain in the days of the Inquisition, where human horrors vie with the supernatural. Maturin’s influence on the modern horror novel can be seen in later works like Dracula, another novel that follows its title character across Europe, while weaving the tales of different narrators into a portrait of a mysterious and terrifying figure. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.