The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence Read Online Free

that I was very glad to think of anything rather than politics. In short I was so engrossed with my tale, which I completed in less than two months, that one evening I wrote from the time I had drunk my tea, about six o’clock, till half an hour after one in the morning, when my hands and fingers were so weary, that I could not hold the pen to finish the sentence, but left Matilda and Isabella talking, in the middle of a paragraph. 5

    To another of his correspondents, Walpole wrote:

    I gave reign to my imagination; visions and passions choked me. I wrote it in spite of rules, critics, and philosophers; it seems to me the better for that. I am even persuaded that in the future, when taste will be restored to the place now occupied by philosophy, my poor Castle will find admirers. 6

    The Castle of Otranto tells the story of the overthrow of a tyrant prince in an Italian state during the time of the Crusades, and the restoration of the rightful line in the person of a seeming peasant boy of noble bearing. The instrument of this turnabout is the vengeful ghost of the boy’s ancestor, Alfonso, poisoned in the Holy Land.
    At the outset of the story, the ghost appears as “an enormous helmet, an hundred times more large than any casque ever made for human being, and shaded with a proportionate quantity of black feathers,” 7 and dashes the son of the tyrant prince to bits. At the end, he appears again, after various hauntings, after melodrama and murder, and identifies the rightful heir:

    A clap of thunder at that instant shook the castle to its foundations; the earth rocked, and the clank of more than mortal armour was heard behind. . . . The walls of the castle behind Manfred were thrown down with a mighty force, and the form of Alfonso, dilated to an immense magnitude, appeared in the centre of the ruins. Behold in Theodore, the true heir of Alfonso! said the vision: and having pronounced these words, accompanied by a clap of thunder, it ascended solemnly towards heaven, where the clouds parting asunder, the form of saint Nicholas was seen; and receiving Alfonso’s shade, they were soon wrapt from mortal eyes in a blaze of glory. 8

    In today’s terms, we might call The Castle of Otranto a fantasy in a historical setting. The most obvious model for this novel is the plays of Shakespeare, particularly Macbeth and Hamlet . But Walpole, writing his Gothic fantasy in an era of rules, critics, and philosophers, “which wants only cold reason ,” 9 was not at all certain beforehand what reception his strange dream-begotten story would arouse in a skeptical modern public. He was so uncertain that he took great pains to hide his identity and the true time and place of the book’s origin.
    He hid himself, and then hid himself again. The title page of the first edition of The Castle of Otranto declared that it was translated by William Marshal, Gentleman, from the original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto.
    Walpole did his best to further muddy the waters in a preface written in his persona of Marshal-the-translator. He began by claiming, “The following work was found in the library of an ancient catholic family in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529.” 10
    Walpole went on to suggest that the story might have been written at the time it was supposed to happen—that is, at some time roughly between 1095 and 1243. But then again, from the names of the servants, perhaps it was written rather nearer in time and place to its original appearance in print. And as for the good Canon Onuphrio Muralto—not mentioned by name in the preface—“Marshal” describes him conjecturally as someone who might have been “an artful priest” 11 who used his abilities as an author to enslave vulgar minds and confirm the populace in their ancient errors and superstitions.
    But it was not enough that Walpole attempted to slide his story off on an