![]() Then the rightful heir is revealed to be a young peasant who remarkably resembles Alfonso the Good, the owner of the mysterious helmet and true Prince of Otranto. But in the end, as Manfred’s plot advances and all falls into chaos and violence, Manfred, hiding behind curtains, stabs his own daughter Matilda, thus ending his line once and for all. In a desperate attempt to avert this fate, Manfred conspires to divorce his wife Hippolita, and marry Isabella, the noble girl who was (forced) to marry Conrad and whom Manfred takes into the castle in her father’s absence. The family may die out, and the castle – will it be deserted, heavy with ivy and fading into oblivion? But no, the castle shall live on with a new master, who is not of Manfred’s lineage: an ancient prophecy rules that the castle and lordship, ‘should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it’. Within its enclosed walls, it harbours an ancient secret a secret that only begins to be revealed when a gigantic helmet falls from the sky and lands on Conrad on his wedding day, the sole heir to Manfred, Prince of Otranto.Īs a result, the line is disrupted, and the glorious legacy of Otranto faces immediate threat. Since Walpole made it a point that he wrote The Castle of Otranto in Strawberry Hill House, it comes as no surprise that a house sits in the very centre of the narrative: the ancestral seat of the princes of Otranto, dark, gloomy, imposing. One of the most famous minds that has been captivated by the Gothic was Horace (Horatio) Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, son of Sir Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister of Britain. It is this flexibility that makes the idea of the Gothic so appealing to the romanticising, artistic, and creative mind during the Victorian era. On the one hand, you can consider the Gothic as something that refuses to fit in, does not quite belong, a bit of a loner but on the other, you can see it as free of restraints, always allowing room for new, unfamiliar things such as the preternatural. Therefore, in generalising terms, the Gothic stands for the rebellious and the innovative. ![]() The Gothic tribes’ identity as ‘outsiders’ allows them to jump out of the framework of the Classical, pagan minds their very existence reveals the limitation of the Graeco-Roman world. The domination of the Angles signifies the triumph of the Catholic Church. With translatio imperii comes translatio studii. In other words, it is a matter of translatio imperii, not of destruction and conquest. One of the major sources is Jordanes’s Getica, which represents the Goths not as destroyers of the Roman Empire, but as an interdependent people who eventually become united with the Romans in Justinian I’s (482–565) victory and incorporation of the Gothic tribes. The founding myths of the Goths slowly take shape during Ostrogothic sovereignty. ![]() In The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction, Nick Groom traces the history of the Goths, how the term evolves as an identity, and what it signifies. ![]() While all these things are indeed Gothic, the Gothic is so much more. No doubt, the Renaissance painter and writer Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) was thinking about just that when he harshly criticised those ‘monstrous and barbaric’ edifices built in the Middle Ages and referred to them as ‘Gothic’. As you are probably aware, the word ‘Gothic’ denotes a great number of things: architecture, art, music, culture, literature, fashion…and, of course, one or several ‘barbarian’ tribes that destroyed the last vestiges of Roman civilisation. In other words, what better entertainment can you expect for so fine an occasion as Halloween?įirst, a few words on the origin of the Gothic. Their stories are weird, dreamlike, at the same time, frightening and exciting and most of all, haunting – yes, you can shut the book and run away, thinking ‘thank heavens! I’m now safe’, but deep down you know that, once you’ve looked into those pages, they will forever stay with you. Make you quiver, this time we introduce to you the strangely creative or creatively strange minds of four Gothic authors who were modern during their own times, yet deeply rooted in the medieval and the nearly-forgotten past. To honour this sacred, one-of-a-kind moment and to – for apparent reasons – Magic or necromancy, ghouls or vampires, werewolves or witches, fairies or elves, or simply Trick-or-Treat…no matter what you deem as your true calling, it is time to get prepared! Brush your capes, sharpen your fangs and claws, dust your ancient manuscripts, and don’t forget to harvest your pumpkins, for All Hallows’ Eve is fast approaching and the witching hour is nigh.
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