Episode 18: The Castle of Otranto

Was Horace Walpole a second-grader when he wrote The Castle of Otranto (1764)? “And then a big helmet squished the guy, and then grandpa walked out of the painting, and then the statue had a nosebleed, and there were boogers and and and.” Nope! He was the 40-something failson of Britain’s first prime minister! (God, who knew failsons would be such a theme of the pod -- not us.) It’s the “first Gothic novel” in English this week, and we’re talking epistemology, gender, the nation, and why this book is so freakin’ goofy. We suspect that’s the point… although maybe not?

Michael Gamer’s excellent Penguin edition has really helpful historical context about The Castle of Otranto’s reception and about Walpole himself. For more on ideologies of the Gothic genre and its legacies, we highly recommend Michael’s book, Romanticism and the Gothic, published by Cambridge University Press.

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