Works of Charles Robert Maturin, Vol. 5: Melmoth the Wanderer

Works of Charles Robert Maturin, Vol. 5: Melmoth the WandererCharles Robert Maturins well known novel, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), occupies a high point in Gothic literature. Lurid, vivid, sacrilegious, paranoid, anti Catholic, painfully tortuous and gleefully drawn out in its depictions of suffering, its title character tries to find victims miserable enough to take over his bargain with the enemy of mankind. Maturin displayed his talents of darkening the gloomy by interweaving tales of Melmoths intended

Charles Robert MaturinÕs well-known novel, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), occupies a high-point in Gothic literature. Lurid, vivid, sacrilegious, paranoid, anti-Catholic, painfully tortuous and gleefully drawn out in its depictions of suffering, its title character tries to find victims miserable enough to take over his bargain with Òthe enemy of mankind.Ó Maturin displayed his talents of Òdarkening the gloomyÓ by interweaving tales of MelmothÕs intended victims: the Englishman Stanton, ensnared into an insane asylum; the Spaniard Mon�ada, trapped in monasteries and prisons of the Inquisition; Immalee, an innocent child of nature; Elinor, a Puritan maiden crossed in love, blighted by cruel deception. All are confronted with MelmothÕs icy seductions. MaturinÕs uncanny aptitude for alternating vertiginous intensity with brooding melancholy and despair leads the reader to a dark side of the psyche where the heavy price paid for redemption often tests human fortitude and conviction beyond the limits of endurance.