Melmoth The Wanderer: Amazon.ca: Charles Robert Maturin, Victor Sage: Books

Product Description

Created by an Irish clergyman, Melmoth is one of the most fiendish characters in literature. In a satanic bargain, Melmoth exchanges his soul for immortality. The story of his tortured wanderings through the centuries is pieced together through those who have been implored by Melmoth to take over his pact with the devil. Influenced by the Gothic romances of the late 18th century, Maturin's diabolic tale raised the genre to a new and macabre pitch. Its many admirers include Poe, Balzac, Oscar Wilde and Baudelaire.

About the Author

Charles Robert Maturin (1782-1824) was born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College. He took orders and worked as a curate in Loughrea and Dublin. Maturin enjoyed literary success with his Gothic novels and a tragedy 'Bertram' (1816). His later plays and fiction, including MELMOTH THE WANDERER, were neglected and he died in poverty. Victor Sage is Reader in Literature in the School of English and American Studies at the University of East Anglia.

Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
In the autumn of 1816, John Melmoth, a student in Trinity College, Dublin, quitted it to attend a dying uncle on whom his hopes for independence chiefly rested. Read the first page

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Concordance

Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews

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Average Customer Review

4.3 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Melmoth - The Anti-Quixote, July 11 2000

By

mp - See all my reviews

Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer" is a brilliantly constructed work of gothic fiction. One hundred years after Jonathan Swift, Maturin takes up his Irish predecessor's gift for harsh, even malevolent satire against any and all offenders - organized religion, government, lovers, warriors - even making broad, devastating comments on humanity in general. Maturin and his characters are quick to point out that this is not 'Radcliffe-romance' gothic, in the direct style of works like "The Mysteries of Udolpho". They are right. Rather than the seemingly landscape-obsessed, rationalistic Radcliffe, Maturin takes his direct gothic influences from the claustrophobic psychological terrors of Godwin's "Caleb Williams," Lewis' "The Monk," and M.W. Shelley's "Frankenstein."

Unlike "The Monk," however, Maturin's novel does not rely heavily on Lewis' supernatural machinery (ghosts, demons, bleeding nuns, etc.). Instead, he offers several apparently unconnected stories that concentrate on families in desperate straits and individuals in extreme crises, pushing the limits of man's inhumanity to man. The connecting element, the wild card with the wild eyes, that pops up just when the characters most/least need him, is Melmoth the Wanderer.

"Melmoth" also draws heavily from Cervantes' "Don Quixote," which provides a great point of comparison for the main character. Where Don Quixote was a wandering knight, pledged to help the helpless, Melmoth is a wandering agent of evil, whose mission is to prey on the helpless. Melmoth has 150 years to tempt the indigent and desperate into selling their souls for wealth, power, or simple relief, and trading places with him.

Again looking backward to "Quixote" and forward to Stoker's "Dracula," "Melmoth" is also heavily concerned with it's own construction as a text. The various stories are pieced together by eyewitnesses, interviewers, and ancient manuscripts, often at several removes from their originals. There is even one gentleman in the novel who is collecting material to write a book about Melmoth the Wanderer.

This is not a book for everyone. Maturin often provides almost excessively long preludes before any action occurs in his nested narratives. The traumas he inflicts on Melmoth's targets can drive you to the point of insanity yourself. However, if you are a admirer of the psychological thriller without all the show of your standard gothic-terror text, "Melmoth the Wanderer" is sure to keep you busy for days, if not weeks.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This book is deep, deep stuff, Dec 31 1998

By A Customer

Only the strongest minds should enter on grounds of this book. Very difficult to read some amazing strong areas, but some very very dull reading to get to them. Peter Tremayne said " I was fourteen years old when I first discovered a copy of Melmoth the Wanderer in my fathers library and tried to read it. 'tried' because I was obviously not sufficiently mature to understand the complexities of that masterpiece of gothic horror. My adult well educated, and well read mind could barely fathom this book.

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5.0 out of 5 stars "He will certainly be damned-"..., Dec 1 2000

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Timothy E. Barnes (Alexandria, VA United States) - See all my reviews

Melmoth was presented with an oppurtunity perhaps a bargain to "...go conquering and to conquer,..." the world ageless and omnipotent for 150 years. However, at the end of this hourglass, like Faust, he must enter the folds of his dealer. Melmoth the wanderer is a cursed man. He hasn't choices yet chooses.

Maturin holds mirrors at the world reflecting vertiginous glimpses of beauty, injustice, greed, malice, and fear somehow marrying them all. Melmoth is a questioner and his actions are the answers. Convolutions are real. Beliefs wed and divorce. Men fear what they consist.

A vast novel well worth the read. Alchemic, Poe, the sea, olive green winds...

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Most recent customer reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars 3 stars for Maturin, 2 stars at most for Sage
First, a huge caveat for prospective buyers. This isn't really a Faustian novel. What it is (judging purely by volume) is a satire of Catholic monks. Read more

Published on April 2 2001 by john salonia

5.0 out of 5 stars Defend or damn Melmoth for yourself
Maturin's novel relates the story of Melmoth, a scholar who traded his soul to Infernal powers in return for answers to all of his questions about the Universe. Read more