Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

criticism also shows how the transgressive side is reinforced through the text’s
“revolutionary,” or rather “rebellious,” stance against established social practices and
institutions as well as autocratic forms of institutionalized power.
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On another level, both Tompkins and Baker note the strong influence of
Germanic texts in Lewis’ work (243, 206), and it is partially the free use of transgressive
strategies reminiscent of Teutonic romance that triggered its criticism. Wordsworth’s
critical disparagement of “stupid German tragedies” was cited earlier while Gamer
perceives that in a conscious effort to reinforce both the feelings of national pride and the
vernacular, there was a persistent “urge to deport Gothicism to Germany” (78). Watt
cites William Preston’s objection to German works not only because they were
considered both “absurd” and “immoral,” but because he perceived them to be socially
subversive: “[German works tend] to make men dissatisfied with the existing order of
things, the restraints of law, the coercion of civil governments, the distinction of ranks in
society, the unequal distribution of property, and with the dispensations of Providence
itself” (qtd. in Watt 78). Beneath this overt cultural rejection, however, there are
ideological motivations of a more pervasive socio-political context. Echoing the view of
Watt mentioned above, Wittman points out, “the German Ritterroman [i.e. German
works like The Monk] … is often susceptible of political meaning” (244), and in a
growing atmosphere of instability spurred by the French revolution, there was an
increased suspiciousness of anything categorized as “not British”” (Kelly 60). Or as Watt
puts it, any works that contained Germanic influences became “guilty by association”
(Watt 75-6). Through this multitude of voiced concern regarding the subversive potential
of The Monk, it appears evident why the cultural elite and the institutional authorities