“Do I Dream?”: The Role of the Nightmare in Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto

Type :

School essay

Pages :

4 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

08/18/2007

Category :

Philosophy & literature

Sub category :

Literature

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Summary :

Introduction
Terror and the fantastic or supernatural
The nightmare world of Otranto
The Gothic supernatural
The doppelganger
The Castle of Otranto and examples of determinism than it is with doubles
Conclusion
Works cited

Abstract

According to Elizabeth MacAndrew, author of The Gothic Tradition in Fiction, the gothic novel is "[. . .] a literature of nightmare. Among its conventions are found dream landscapes and figures of the subconscious imagination" (3). Maggie Kilgour, author of The Rise of the Gothic Novel, agrees that dreams and nightmares are a "classic source of gothic inspiration [. . .]" (191-192). In fact, a dream was the initial inspiration for the first gothic novel ever, horace walpole's The castle of otranto. One night in June 1764, walpole "dreamt of 'an ancient castle' and a 'gigantic hand in armour,'and so he attempted to give his dream fictional form," writes George Haggerty in his book Gothic Fiction/Gothic Form (3). E. J. Clery, in the introduction to the Oxford World's Classic version of the book, notes that "there have also been attempts to apply Freud's methods and analyse otranto as a dream rather than as a work of literature [. . .]" (viii). walpole's story is, indeed, very similar to a nightmare. It contains such nightmare-like qualities as frightening imagery, the appearance of the supernatural, and a number of uncanny occurances.