Humor, the Gothic, and the Supernatural Theme Analysis

Much of what characterizes Gothic literature has to do with setting. As what might be described as the “grandfather” of Gothic literature, Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto displays many of the features that would become stereotypically Gothic. For example, the story takes place in a foreign country, in a medieval castle with towers and secret passageways. The castle is eerie and ominous, plagued by creaking hinges, trap doors clanging shut, the wailing of the wind, and the life-like quality of people in paintings.

Supernatural elements like ghosts, visions, mysterious suits of armor, and prophecies run through the novel. Though Walpole is often credited as the first Gothic novelist, such fanciful elements were in fact drawn from medieval romance, heroic tales in which knights often encountered marvels or supernatural phenomena on their adventures. Though the Gothic novel was always considered lowbrow literature even during the height of its popularity, before Walpole, “gothic” was looked down upon even more, and associated with barbarism. Walpole’s novel helped to change that, and his unfettered enthusiasm for the Middle Ages was extraordinary. One of many accomplishments he is well known for is Strawberry Hill, a faux-medieval castle Walpole built for himself and on which he based The Castle of Otranto.

Though many of the literary devices found in Otranto are now recognized as archetypically “Gothic,” Walpole’s novel indulged in humor in a way that later Gothic works such as Dracula and Frankenstein did not. Part of this is achieved merely by his presentation of Gothic and supernatural elements. For example, Conrad’s death by giant helmet, while tragic to the story’s characters, is completely absurd. The setting itself, often merely eerie in later Gothic works, is also occasionally humorous. The castle’s “deep and hollow groan” is “the effect of pent-up vapours” — in other words, the castle is farting.

Another aspect of Walpole’s humor is the way he claims that the story, in fact, was written by a 16th century Catholic priest and then was translated by a man named “William Marshal, Gent.” This claim about the origin of the text is fairly obviously false, and funny in its own right. At the same time, it allows Walpole in his first preface to the novel to masquerade self-praise as self-deprecation, and includes tongue-in-cheek hints at the novel’s true authorship. More generally, Walpole seems to revel in the story’s “Gothicness” while also poking fun at it in the first preface. In the first preface, Walpole claims the novel is merely entertainment while in his preface to the second edition, he claims that it was “an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern,” that is, to find a happy medium between the fanciful character of medieval romance and the realism of the modern novel. The apparently contradictory aims professed by Walpole have made readers question to what extend the book should be interpreted at face value or as a spoof of medieval literature.