Charles Robert Maturin's Melmoth The Wanderer and Honoré De Balzac's Melmoth Réconcilié

The gothic novel is born in England with the publication of Horace Walpole’s novel, The Castle 
of Otranto, in 1764. Leaving out the analysis of the path made in its native country, let’s see 
which continuation it had in another country, France. 
The success of gothic novel (1) has alternate phases due to the long pause imposed by 
Napoleon’s government, restorer of a classicism, or pseudo-classicism, with which the gothic 
novel had been in contrast since its birth.
The first gothic works had a weak success in France. In March 1767 the first “free” translation 
(2) of The Castle of Otranto appears. Of this story, what most interested French people was 
the author’s foreword, in which there were comments (3) on Shakespeare, to whom he had 
referred to create the characters of the servants (4), and French critics who, following Voltaire,
discussed whether it was opportune or not to mix funniness and seriousness in the same work 
(5). The novel itself interested little and had a very few editions (only two till 1774). 
Nor had Clara Reeve’s novel much success. It is sufficient to think that the first French 
translation of The Old English Baron appeared only in 1787, ten years after its first publication 
in England. 
In spite of their poor success of public, the translation and publication of these works in France
represent an important anticipation. The first authors appear, using some characteristic 
elements of the gothic novel. It is the case, for example, of M.me de Genlis, the author, in 
1782, of Adèle et Théodore, in which, to tell the story of a woman imprisoned for nine years by
a jealous husband, already uses a net of those horrible vaults that will be very often seen in
the following years. M.me de Genlis will use these elements in another novel, Les Chevaliers 
du Cygne, in which she shows to know German literature (6) and to have been influenced by 
H. Walpole (7) and probably also by Clara Reeve (8). 
In 1797, the first translations of Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian and 
M. G. Lewis’s The Monk are published, marking the start of the great favour encountered by 
gothic novel in France.
If in England the outbreak of the French Revolution did not seem to have had a great influence
in the spreading of the taste of gothic novel, in France, instead, it favoured it, accustoming the
public to bloody and appalling scenes. The revolution had begun as a protest rebellion, a 
protest that affected also cultural environments, oppressed by ancient traditions and classicism 
rules. What was expressed was the need of novelty, and what better than gothic novel could 
give it, with the horror arisen by scenes full of blood, crimes, murders, to which was added the
terror coming from the exploration of unknown regions of supernatural and extraordinary? 
The bases were then set and the English gothic novel rapidly spread throughout France, thanks
to the work of keen translators, to whom, however, it is impossible not to reproach the
excessive freedom of interpretation used in translations. In fact, it is not rare to find
translators making changes to the texts or translating only some parts, as a “consideration” 
towards French readers’ sensibility.
The most translated works were Ann Radcliffe’s and M. G. Lewis’s. French readers liked much 
the former for the same reason for which she had been criticized in England: the application, in
her novels, of what was called “explained supernatural”, according to which all extraordinary,
terrifying and apparently inexplicable events of the plot, at the end of the novel find a logic 
and a natural explanation. 
A much greater success had the author of The Monk, favoured by the topicality of described 
scenes and themes dealt with. The horrors committed by monk Ambrosio certainly satisfied a 
public who still had before their eyes the horrible things of the Revolution, while the scenes of
black magic, spells, magic potions and artifices recalled to French people the case of a 
charlatan called Cagliostro who had made a great fuss in Paris some years before the 
appearing of the translation of The Monk (8). And as already for Ann Radcliffe’s novels, French 
readers liked The Monk for the same reasons for which it had been criticized by English, who
had judged it rough and immoral. French readers, fascinated by the novelty of the novel and 
by the imagination used by the author, passed over those defects that English Puritanism could
not excuse. 
In France, people did not just publish translations of English novels: as already in England,
between the end of the XVIII and the beginning of the XIX century, we find a great number of 
imitators, with the only aim of making a commercial literature, with no interest in style and
originality.
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Since the moment in which the translations of The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Italian and The
Monk appear, the gothic novel dominates on French novel and not even the adverse literary 
criticisms can stop this spreading phenomenon. Novelists above all reproduce, with an
irritating monotony, Ann Radcliffe’s mysteries and “explained supernatural” or Lewis’s most 
extravagant horrors and irrational supernatural, with all the details characterizing their models’
works.
In order to make easier the task of the so many novelists desiring to become famous as 
authors of gothic novels, real handbooks are born, in which all the elements necessary for the 
composition are listed. Obviously, satires and parodies did not take much time to appear: 
some of them are really funny and had the same success of the works they intended to mock. 
One of the most famous parodies was La nuit anglaise, by Bellin de la Liborlière, the author of
gothic novels too (9). It tells the adventures of an honest merchant, M. Dabaud, to whom 
some friend play a trick. M. Dabaud is an eager reader of gothic novels and, as a consequence 
of the trick, he finds himself to live all the adventures lived by his preferred heroes. 
Descriptions of the scenes are even taken, word by word, from the most famous gothic novels.
In the end, the victim of the trick finds himself among his friends, but not before renouncing
forever:
à tous ces romans passés, présents et futurs où il y aura des spectres, des ruines, des 
vieux châteaux, des bandits, des petites portes cachées, des poignards tachés de sang, 
des armoires secrètes et surtout une tour portant le nom de quelque ce puisse être des 
quatre points cardinaux. (10) 
While extravagant and ridiculous imitations of the English gothic novel proliferate, Ann
Radcliffe’s influence exerts also on another group of writers. They are the authors of popular
novels, a genre born at the end of the XVIII century and that from that moment on will have a 
great success. Since the beginning, two currents can be distinguished, that of the grotesque 
and often licentious novel, whose greatest representative was Pigault-Lebrun, little influenced
by the school of terror, and that of the novel in which bandit bands act. The plot then becomes 
the story of a kidnapping, often involving children, of disappearances, of hidden identities and 
of providential recognitions, all processes used in his novels by Ducray-Duminil (11), on whom
Ann Radcliffe’s influence was relevant, even if in a successive moment the English writer was
influenced by the French novelist. 
The fashion of the gothic novel undergoes a progressive decline during the first years of the 
XIX century. It is the fifteen-year Napoleon’s reign experimenting the rebirth of neoclassical 
taste. No English writer obtained in those years the success that Radcliffe and Lewis had had. 
But the gothic novel does not disappear from literature. After 1816, after Napoleon’s fall, and 
with the growing spreading of Romanticism, the gothic novel renovates and, with a new
strength, it will conquer an important place in the cultural world of the new school, thanks to
the interest arisen in much more educated writers, with a greater value than those who wrote 
in the first period.
In the period of restoration, stranger writers were again fashionable. In 1819, new editions of 
Radcliffe’s and Lewis’s novels appear. Their influence renovates, but this time it will be 
received differently by the protagonists of French Romanticism.
Ann Radcliffe’s first imitators had borrowed above all the most sensational elements of her
novels. Her translators had neglected the most lyrical part of her works. But now, with 
Romanticism, people more and more appreciate the beautiful natural descriptions with which
Radcliffe integrated her works, her poems’ melancholy, her love for dreams and music. At the 
same time, Romantics adopt also the most extravagant mechanisms of Lewis’s novel: the 
agreement with the devil and supernatural refusing any rational explanation. 
As in the first period, these themes are adopted trying to retrieve emotions that Napoleonic
“classicism” had removed. 
In 1821, there are the first translations of Melmoth the Wanderer (12) by Reverend Ch. R. 
Maturin, and other works by the same author, which add new elements of horror and mystery 
to the list (13). 
In the same time, in spite of the disputes between classics and romantics, the Romantic
Movement gains more and more strength. It is always much linked to the inspiration coming
from gothic novel themes, but new elements are added: writers have much interest in the 
Eastern countries, in Swedenborg’s mysticism, in Hoffmann’s fantastic (brought to France in
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1829); the interest in Goethe’s Faust is renewed, which brings into favour the Satanism that 
Lewis had brought to fashion about thirty years before. 
Almost all romantics, minor o greater authors, sooner or later, have interest in gothic novel,
giving it a quality and a value which lacked in the imitations of the first period. As at the
beginning of the century, a large group of minor writers dedicate themselves to the 
composition of gothic novels of poor interest. The importance of these works is in the fact that
they left a trace in the works of the great protagonists of French romanticism, who were their
first readers. Stendhal recommends to his sister the reading of The Mysteries of Udolpho and 
The Italian (14); Gautier, in his youth, was an eager reader of gothic novels and his passion 
for supernatural, spiritism and the fantastic drove him to the composition of La Morte 
Amoureuse (1845) (15); George Sand, too, had the passion of the mysterious and the 
supernatural and for this she wrote works like Lélia (1833), Consuelo (1842) and Le Château
des Désertes (1851); Charles Nodier cannot help admiring the most extravagant works, like, 
for example, Maturin’s novels (17); Victor Hugo will write Han d’Islande (1823), a mass of 
horrors, and still in 1862, writing Les Misérables will remember the gothic novel; at last,
Honoré de Balzac, still as an amateur, will ask to the gothic novel some technical suggestions
and hints for many of his works. 
Romanticism was the golden age of gothic novel. Its end marked its decline, not his
disappearance. In the half of XIX century, and also afterwards, we still find some imitations
and adaptations of gothic novels, but they are reminiscences and not a new fashion. Come to 
France in the sly, exploded between 1795 and 1797, the gothic novel survived to the 
Napoleonic period to conquer a new place in the sun in romantic literature of the first half of 
the XIX century. A source of inspiration for many protagonists of that period, it will follow the
fate of the movement that had driven it to the limelight, but it will not disappear from the
history of literature, always representing a minor genre, but arriving till our days.
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NOTES
(1) The Romantic Movement will bring new elements of inspiration to whose influence the
gothic genre will not be alien. The rediscovery of nature, love, the knowledge of German pre-
romantic literature make gothic novel more extraordinary and picturesque. Even if the word 
“gothic” will be used to appoint H. Walpole’s and his followers’ work, during Romanticism one
will speak of “terrifying novel” or “novel of terror and wonder” in England, and of “terrifying
novel” or “dark novel” in France. 
(2) It is a translation in French, printed in Amsterdam and that the author found very 
defective: “A very bad translation of The Castle of Otranto was published in Paris this month”,
Walpole himself tells in a letter dated March 13
th
, 1767. 
(3) These comments appear only from the second edition on, published on April 11
th
, 1765. 
(4) “With regard to the deportment of the domestics (…) I had higher authority than my own 
opinion for this conduct. That great master of nature, Shakespeare, was the model I copied”, 
HORACE WALPOLE, The Castle of Otranto, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 8. 
(5) Walpole recognizes however that “Voltaire is a genius, but not of Shakespeare’s 
magnitude”, H. WALPOLE, op. cit., p. 9. 
(6) One of the incidents occurring in the novel seems to have taken origin from the German 
legend of the “bloody nun”. 
(7) M. me de Genlis personally met Horace Walpole, of whom she was a guest at Strawberry 
Hill. It is to be thought that the novelist had read The Castle of Otranto much time before the 
publication of her second novel, but M. me de Genlis always loved to present herself as the
beginner of a new genre, more than an imitator. 
(8) See ALICE M. KILLEN, Le Roman Terrifiant, ou Roman Noir, Paris, H. Champion, 1967, p. 
87.
(9) La Nuit anglaise, ou les Aventures jadis un peu extraordinaires, mais aujourd’hui toutes 
simples et très communes de M. Dabaud, marchand de la rue Saint-Honoré à Paris; roman 
comme il y en a trop, traduit de l’arabe en iroquois, de l’iroquois en samoyède, du samoyède 
en hottentot, du hottentot en lapon e du lapon en français, par le R.P. Spectroruini, moine 
indien, 2 vol. in-12, Paris, 1799. 
(10) «To all those past, present and future novels, in which there will be ghosts, ruins, old 
castles, bandits, little hidden doors, daggers stained with blood, secret cabinets and above all 
a tower with one of the four cardinal points”, La Nuit anglaise, t. II, p. 148. 
(11) Victor, ou l’Enfant de la Forêt, (1796); Coelina, ou l’Enfant du Mystère, (1798); Les Petits 
Orpehlines du Hameau, (1800); Elmonde, ou la Fille de l’Hospice (1805), etc. 
(12) From this moment on, every reference to this novel will be indicated only with Melmoth.
(13) Lewis’s and Maturin’s followers brought licentiousness and atrocity at such a level that, 
around 1825, the government was obliged to intervene, censoring many works, among which 
Balzac’s Le Vicaire des Ardennes. But in 1830, censorship was abolished and novelists could 
again free their imagination. 
(14) A. M. KILLEN, op. cit., p. 123 
(15) ibid., p. 124 
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(16) ibid., p. 124 
(17) ibid., p. 135 
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