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This book addresses the intriguing incongruity between naming Charles Robert Maturin as a 'well-known' author of the Romantic period and the lack of any real critical analysis of his works in the past thirty years. The central thesis of the book is that Maturin's novels provide the key to a new understanding of Irish national fiction as a peculiarly haunted form of literature. Specifically, it argues that Maturin's too often overlooked body of fiction forcefully underscores the haunting presence of the past and past literary forms in early nineteenth-century Irish literature. It is a presence so often omitted and/or denied in current critical studies of Irish Romantic fiction. The book represents a project of ghost-hunting and ghost-conjuring. It investigates the ways in which Maturin's fourth novel attempts to build on the ruins of the Irish nation by describing the fissures produced by religious sectarianism in the country. The book makes use of the rarely consulted correspondence between Maturin and the publisher Archibald Constable. It does this to emphasise the manner in which Maturin's completion of his novel, Melmoth the wanderer was at all times crowded by, and, indeed, infiltrated with, his work on competing texts. These include books of sermons, Gothic dramas, short stories, and epic poems interspersed with prose narrative.
This essay casts a new light on the anti-Catholicism of Charles Robert Maturin‘s gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer by reading it as part of a larger assault on systems in the wake of the French Revolution. Maturin‘s attack on the stupendous system of Catholicism contributes to a broader conservative polemic against all forms of international governance. Melmoth the Wanderer‘s portrait of the Church offers us an early instance of modern conservatisms archnemesis: an international system that conspires to rule the world.
This essay discusses the possibility of a new reading of Charles Maturins Bertram; or, The Castle of St. Aldobrandon the basis of a hitherto ignored manuscript, ‘Epilogue’ to the drama found in the archives of publisher John Murray. The essay adds a new chapter to the tormented publishing history of this work and sheds light on the ambiguous and shifting moral and political interpretations given by both Maturin and his audience to one of the most famous Gothic dramas.
-first-century Ireland, Maturin, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, insists that we pay attention to our origins, to the people and events we have now forgotten but which continue still to shape and inform our society and culture. Notes 1 Letter from Charles Robert Maturin to Sir Walter Scott, 2 July 1816, appended to the handwritten
Dead and gone: Marturin’s current status The year 2010 marked the 230th anniversary of the birth of the Anglo-Irish clergyman and author Charles Robert Maturin ( 1780–1824 ). Famous for his popular Gothic drama, Bertram; or, the castle of St Aldobrand ( 1816 ) and a landmark Gothic novel, Melmoth the wanderer ( 1820 ), Maturin is considered a ‘well-known’ early
. 22 Both the 1892 edition of Melmoth the Wanderer and Montague Summers’s bibliography of Gothic works lists the publication date as 1825, but the online catalogues for the British Library and Trinity College Dublin library, where copies of the play are held, list an uncertain 1830; see ‘A list of works by Charles Robert Maturin, with translations and
French background who utilised English, Welsh and Irish settings in his fiction. Le Fanu has been persistently aligned with a so-called Irish gothic tradition, inaugurated by Charles Robert Maturin (another Dublin Huguenot) and rendered notorious by Bram Stoker whose Dracula successfully transferred to the twentieth century and the snuff movie. Quite enough has been written
. Notes 1 Charles Robert Maturin, The fatal revenge; or, the family of Montorio , 3 vols (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1807 ), 3: 492–3. Future references are to this edition and are given parenthetically in the text. 2 Trumpener
1 Charles Robert Maturin, The Albigenses, a romance , 4 vols (London: Hurst, Robinson & Co., 1824 ), 1: vii. Future references are to this edition and are given parenthetically in the text. 2 BL 41996/27, letter from Maturin to Hurst, Robinson & Co., 25 June 1821
. Notes 1 Dale Kramer, Charles Robert Maturin (New York: Twayne, 1973 ), p. 43. 2 Charles Robert Maturin, The wild Irish boy , introd. Robert Lee Wolff, 3 vols ( 1808 ; New York: Garland, 1979 ), 1: x. Future