Between the revolution and the convent: a proposed reading of The Monk

• Grant number: 24/09197-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2024
• End date: August 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Antonio Alcir Bernardez Pecora
• Grantee: Mariana Lins Wolmer
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project intends to analyse the novel The Monk (1796), by Matthew Gregory Lewis, considered one of the initial works of English Gothic literature, with a focus on the use of elements associated with the Catholic church - the convent, the monastery, the priest, the abbess - as sources of the terror and violence in the plot. In order to elucidate how the narrative mobilises anti-clerical and anti-Catholic discourses in circulation in the period, exploring the tension between the internal workings of religious institutions and society at large, a comparative reading is to be developed between Lewis's novel and two series of works contemporary to its production: French revolutionary anti-clerical theatre and English convent epistolary novels from the late 18th century. Although localised outside of the scope of what is traditionally considered Gothic, these series of works utilise similar genre conventions to The Monk, opening up space for an investigation that goes beyond the teleological perspective that only perceives in the novel a specific moment of the historiography of Gothic literature.