The Gothic novel is traditionally divided into two main branches, “terror” and ”horror”, and it is in the latter that The Monk is to be placed. It is one of the most extreme examples of horror Gothic, dealing as it does with such shocking topics as rape, matricide, and incest. In The Monk we see Gothic being taken to its limits – both in terms of subject matter and public acceptability. The storm of controversy the novel created on its publication in 1796 indicates that Lewis had gone well beyond the more sedate story-lines of his avowed inspiration, Anne Radcliffe, the major representative of terror Gothic. Where Radcliffe always provides a natural explanation for ostensibly supernatural phenomena, Lewis revels in the use

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Published 30 June 2002

Citation: Sim, Stuart. "The Monk". The Literary Encyclopedia. 30 June 2002.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=139, accessed 20 November 2009.]