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Otranto follow-up
28 Aug 06
Seems when I said Otranto “wasn’t particularly well written“, I wasn’t too far out in left field. Marshall Brown, while providing a plot summary, says “It would all be very funny if the stiff and awkward prose did not effectively stifle the tumultuous bustle of the action” (26). He finishes his plot summary with the following frank appraisal:
When slogging through the crowded incidents, one wonders how such an insane mishmash could have gained popular success. Much is totally unprepared, and nothing is adequately motivated; there is little consistency in the types of incidents, and the focus of interest shifts radically from moment to moment. Far from a coherent undertaking, the novel is best seen as an attempt to comprehend within a tiny compass as great a variety as possible. (27)
I’ll be writing more on Brown’s approach to the gothic in future posts.
Work Cited
Brown, Marshall. The Gothic Text. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2005.
Posted by pzed on August 28, 2006 at 11.42am
Categories: gothic, scripture
