Wordsworth's Gothic Readings


For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. To this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of our country have conformed themselves. The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of Shakespeare and Milton, are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.--When I think upon this degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation I am almost ashamed to have spoken of the feeble effort with which I have endeavored to counteract it . . .

"Preface" to Lyrical Ballads (1800).

  • Aikin, John and Anna Laetita Aikin (later Barbauld). On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror, with Sir Bertrand, A Fragment" . From Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose (1773). Clear borrowings evident in his early "Vale of Esthwaite," right down to the sarcophagal female and her "taper blue." Cited by Moorman in her Biography (60), although she mistakenly attributes the work to Lucy Aikin, Barbauld's niece.
  • Beattie, James. The Minstrel (1779). A favorite of Wordsworth's. See for example the letter to William Mathews, 23 October 1795.
  • Bürger, Gottfried August. "Lenore" and "The Lass of Fair Wone" from Gedichte (1777). Wordsworth also had Taylor's translation of "Lenore." Letter to STC, late Nov.--early Dec. 1798: "I accede to your opinion that Bürger is always the poet; he is never the mobbist, one of those dim drivellers with which our island has teemed for so many years. Bürger is one of those authors whose book I like to have in my hand, but when I have laid the book down I do not think of him. I remember a hurry of pleasure, but I have few distinct forms that people my mind, nor any recollection of delicate or minute feelings which he has either communicated to me, or taught me to recognize. I see everywhere the character of Bürger himself; and even this, I agree with you, is no mean merit. But yet I wish him sometimes at least to make me forget himself sometimes in his creations. It seems to me, that in poems descriptive of human nature, however short they may be, character is absolutely necessary, &c.: incidents are among the lowest allurements of poetry. Take from Bürger's poems the incidents, which are seldom or ever of his own invention, and still much will remain: there will remain a manner of relating which is almost always spirited and lively, and stamped and peculiarized with genius. Still I do not find those higher beauties which can entitle him to the name of a great poet. . . . Burger is the poet of the animal spirits. I love his "Ta ra la" dearly; but less of the horn and more of the lute--and far, far more of the pencil."
  • Collins, William. "Ode to Fear" (1746). See Moorman's Biography (51).
  • Godwin, William. Caleb Williams (1794). See the "Introduction" by Robert Osborn to his Cornell edition of The Borderers, especially page 31.
  • Lewis, Matthew Gregory. The Monk (1796) (?). See Gill's discussion in A Life (107). Gill also and importantly conjectures that W.W. "picked up the argument about gross effects in literature advanced by Coleridge in his review of The Monk (132).

 

---. Castle Spectre (1797). Letter to James Tobin 6 March 1798 (a helpful context here, emphasized by Gill, is the recent rejection of W.W.'s play The Borderers): "I am perfectly easy about the theatre, if I had no other method of employing myself Mr. Lewis's success would have thrown me into despair. The Castle Spectre is a spectre indeed."

Wordsworth saw the play on 21 May 1798 at the Theatre Royal in Bristol. Hazlitt recalls his reaction in "My First Acquaintance with Poets": "[Wordsworth] had been to see the Castle Spectre by Monk Lewis, while at Bristol, and described it very well. He said 'it fitted the taste of the audience like a glove.' This ad captandum comment however was no recommendation of it, according to the severe principles of the new school, which reject rather than court popular effect." Is it a coincidence that this report ocurs the same day as W.W.'s open air reading of "Peter Bell," which is in may ways anti-gothic? Read the Castle Spectre, courtesy of Diego Saglia of the University of Parma.

  • Radcliffe, Ann. The Romance of the Forest (1791). Long ago noted by Legouis in his The Early Life (272), where he pointed out that the novel's evil Marquis de Montalt served as a model for W.W.'s Rivers/Oswald.

 

---. The Italian (1797). "One of Mrs. Radcliffe's romances, viz. 'The Italian,' he had, by some strange accident, read--read only to laugh at it; whilst on the other hand, the novels of Smollett, Fielding, and Le Sage . . . he read and remembered with extreme delight." DeQuincey. Collected Writings (Masson) III. 206. See also the letter to R. P. Gillie 25 April 1815: Wordsworth remarks on "that want of taste, which is universal among modern novels of the Radcliffe school."

  • Schiller, Friedrich. The Robbers trans. A. F. Tytler (1792). See Osborn's discussion in The Borderers (11) on W.W.'s knowing the work via Coleridge.
  • (?)Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto (1765). Seems very likely given the gothic effects in the "Vale" and some other juvenalia, but I haven't been able to track down firm evidence of his reading. Perhaps W.W. was acquainted with one of the many imitations of Walpole's influential romance?