Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

wave of fear across governments and continents that initiated many debates not only
confined to national politics, but to aspects of contemporary culture as well. As the
major thinkers and policy makers of the time contemplated the consequences of changes
in society, cultural economy, and the revolution, they engaged in a frenzy of cross-
disciplinary exchanges and negotiations which greatly affected accepted conventions and
traditionally held hierarchies of thought, taste, and value. It is within this climate of great
change and turmoil that Lewis’ novel established itself as a quintessential work of
transgession by breaking taboos, challenging accepted artistic standards, and being
politically and morally subversive. In doing so, The Monk paved the way for legions of
canonical texts after it by engaging and defying established norms and conventions.
Published in 1796, Matthew Lewis’ The Monk tells the story of Ambrosio, a
monk who is torn between keeping his monastic vows and carrying out his personal
ambitions. As the plot unfolds, the monk succumbs to temptation, which leads him on
the path to sin and vice, incest, rape, and murder. Although immensely popular, Lewis’
novel aroused a considerable amount of controversy, culminating in a trial whose
outcome resulted in the author’s having to alter and edit certain passages of the text that
were considered to be “lewd,” “blasphemous,” and “immoral” (McEvoy viii-ix). Critical
reception of The Monk was for the most part unfavorable on the grounds that the
immorality of its content—particularly the explicit accounts of sex and violence—failed
to heed the prevailing Horatian dictum that literature should serve moral and social
functions: “[literature] had not only to please, but also to instruct, and it should instruct in
the ways of virtue rather than vice” (McEvoy vii). Another reason for its condemnation
was due to the fact that it was a novel—and more precisely, a Gothic novel—an emerging
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