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Even though The Monk was immensely popular at the time of its publication, it
did not attain critical acclaim—and was barred from the accepted list of canonical works
of the period—because it transgressed the predominant ideologies of contemporary
canonizers and their concerns for maintaining certain criteria of taste and value. In part,
Lewis’ novel was stigmatized by the perceived shortcomings of a low, unimportant, and
possibly subversive genre, the Gothic. In the period’s unofficial hierarchies of genre, the
Gothic was not only considered inferior to a major movement, Romanticism, but also a
sub-genre of another disreputable genre: the novel, which did not correspond to the
critics’ standards regarding the use value of literature as a legitimate source of instruction
and pleasure. While The Monk did not reap general critical commendation because of its
transgressions, it nevertheless influenced the canon of the Gothic in more major ways
than did the novels of Radcliffe. Concurring with Watt on precisely this point, Gamer
makes the following observation:
Lewis’s reception and the reputation it created significantly shaped
Gothic’s status and identity. James Watt notes that even the
published defenses of The Monk did not hesitate to acknowledge
its “outrage[s] against decency and propriety,” but instead used its
perceived transgressiveness as a foundation on which to construct
The Monk as a “distinctly daring” work of “genius”. (88)
Lewis’ audacity in exceeding the genre’s accepted conventions regarding the treatment of
the supernatural, the use of Terror vs. Horror, and assertions of good and evil, set an
example for ensuing generations of writers who revered the tradition of “horror-Gothic”
which he instigated. These “innovations,” however, were also the source of many critics’
contempt for the novel. The Monk‘s horrifying accounts of human transgressions
contained the potential to shock its prospective audiences by offering an unprecedented