Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

distinct transgressions: the author crossed established conventions by defining his work
against the prevailing paradigms of genre and content. On the one hand, the use of
German-influenced “horror” and other Gothic literary devices clearly sets the work
against the aesthetics of its Lake School contemporaries, while on the other, the explicit
depiction of acts of sexual and violent behavior made it vulnerable to attacks spawned by
conventional morality. As mentioned earlier, The Monk illustrates rather well the three
categories of transgression: it simultaneously breaks taboos, rejects accepted artistic
practices, and challenges political economies by producing shock, creating controversy,
and being potentially subversive.
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As briefly suggested above, within the specifics of the Gothic, The Monk stands
out particularly in contrast to the more popular novels of Ann Radcliffe. To this effect,
James Watt contends that as a genre, Gothic fiction is "constituted or structured by the
often antagonistic relations between different writers and works" (6). It is widely
recognized that there are two stages in the development of the Gothic: one established by
Radcliffe, who molded it to popular favor, was either labeled “terror-Gothic” and/or
“loyalist,” considered “feminine,” and drew its inspiration from French sensationalism
and Elizabethan Dramatists and the second, embodied by Lewis, who was influenced by
German stories, which was labeled “horror-Gothic” and was first praised for its
“masculinity” and “vigor,” before finally being considered as immoral and scandalous,
obscene and perfidious, seditious and revolutionary.
The contrast between the two writers is obvious in their approach to the Gothic,
and more particularly, in the explicitness of content and in their usage of certain Gothic
conventions. There is also a notable difference in their perspectives regarding the