Matthew Lewis (writer) - Reception of His Work

Reception of His Work

As a writer, Lewis is typically classified as writing in the horror-gothic genre along with authors Charles Robert Maturin and Mary Shelley. Though he was most assuredly influenced by Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and William Godwin’s Caleb Williams, taking Radcliffe’s obsession with the supernatural and Godwin’s narrative drive and interest in crime and punishment, Lewis differed with his literary approach. Whereas Radcliffe would allude to the imagined horrors under the genre of terror-gothic, Lewis defined himself by disclosing the details of the gruesome scenes, earning him the title of horror-gothic novelist. For Lewis, by giving the reader the information, he provides a more fulfilling experience. In the article “Matthew Lewis and the Gothic Horror of Obsessional Neurosis,” Ed Cameron argues that “Lewis disregards and often parodies the sentimentality found in Radcliffe’s work.” Without ambiguities, however, Lewis sometimes appears excessive in his materialized descriptions of the supernatural, losing a sense of wonder in the process.

Lewis is often criticized for a lack of originality. Though much of Lewis’ career dealt with the translation of other texts, these criticisms more often refer to his novel The Monk and his play The Castle Spectre. Beginning with The Monk, Lewis starts the novel with an advertisement which reads:

The first idea of this Romance was suggested by the story of the Santon Barsisa, related in The Guardian. –The Bleeding Nun is a tradition still credited in many parts of Germany; and I have been told, that the ruins of the Castle of Lauenstein, which She is supposed to haunt, may yet be seen upon the borders of Thuringia. –The Water-King, from the third to twelfth stanza, is the fragment of an original Danish Ballad—And Belerma and Durandarte is translated from some stanzas to be found in a collection of old Spanish poetry, which contains also the popular song of Gayferos and Melesindra, mentioned in Don Quixote. –I have now made a full avowal of all the plagiarisms of which I am aware myself; but I doubt not, many more may be found, of which I am at present totally unconscious.

While some critics, like those of The Monthly Review, saw combinations of previous works as a new invention, others, including Samuel Coleridge, have argued that by revealing where Lewis found inspiration, he surrendered part of his authorship. This bothered Lewis so much that in addition to a note written by Lewis in the fourth edition of The Monk, he also included notes to the text when he published The Castle Spectre as a way to counteract any plagiarist accusations. However, his success is debatable.