The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

In 1765, a book was published called The Castle of Otranto. The title page proclaimed the text as translated by "William Marshal, Gent. from the Original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto." The preface discussed various issues, such as dating the original (the style of the Italian suggested the Renaissance, the subject-matter clearly belonged to the period of the Crusades) and the author's habit of interrupting the high doings of the main characters with the commonplace absurdities of the servants.

The book was a great success, prompting a second edition in which the writer and politician Horace Walpole (left), son of Britain's first prime minister¹, admitted to being the author of the work. In a new preface, he apologised to the reader for the deception, claiming that "As diffidence of his own abilities, and the novelty of the attempt, were his sole inducements to assume that disguise, he flatters himself that he shall appear excusable."

In fact, Walpole was far from being the only author of the period to foist such a deception on the public, literary follies being almost as common as architectural ones in the later 18th century. The most famous is the poet Thomas Chatterton, who committed suicide in 1770 at the age of seventeen², having published "translations" of an imaginary 15th century poet called Thomas Rowley. There was also James Macpherson, who similarly claimed to have translated the works of an ancient Scottish bard called Ossian. It's generally accepted that Macpherson used genuine fragments of ancient Highland poetry, but most of Ossian's poem were his own works.

The Castle of Otranto was immensely popular and kicked off the tradition of gothic fiction, which Walpole implicitly defined in his second preface as a combination of the supernatural elements found in mediaeval romance with the realism of modern novelists such as Fielding and Richardson. At first, the genre consisted of lurid novels by authors such as Matthew Lewis and Ann Ratcliffe³, but it strongly influenced the Romantic poets, especially Coleridge and Keats, and found a more sophisticated voice in authors like Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe and, to some extent, the Brontës.

Quite early on, the genre began splitting. Lewis's bestseller, The Monk, and many others of its kind, featured magic, ghosts and other unearthly elements, whereas authors like Ratcliffe, played down the supernatural in favour of the over-the-top love stories the genre also featured. In time, one strand came down through Poe, Stoker and many others as the horror and paranormal tradition, while Ratcliffe's fainting heroines and mysterious heroes evolved into romantic fiction⁴. Both traditions are alive and well today.

A little while ago, I picked up a Penguin Classics volume called Three Gothic Novels, featuring Shelley's Frankenstein, Beckford's Vathek and The Castle of Otranto. I'd read and loved the other two many years ago, but I'd never read Otranto, so I recently decided to remedy that.

It's described as the first gothic novel, but it's really no more than a novella, about a hundred pages in the standard-sized paperback. Still, it takes a while to get through. Those hundred pages consist of mammoth paragraphs (I counted one at seven pages), many of them consisting of back-and-forth dialogue without breaks. And, to make matters worse, Walpole uses absolutely no punctuation to indicate either the start or finish of speech (not even the French-style dashes), making it sometimes very difficult to work out who's supposed to be saying what.

The story is a bizarre one, which Walpole claimed came to him in a dream. Manfred, Prince of Otranto, has a son and daughter, but his son is killed on his wedding day by a gigantic helmet falling from the skies. Cheated of his chance for an heir through the male line, Manfred decides to divorce his saintly wife Hippolita and marry his would-be daughter-in-law Isabella.

Appalled, Isabella flees to the nearby abbey run by Father Jerome, and is helped on her way by a young man called Theodore, who just happens to be Jerome's long-lost son. Then, as strange happenings intensify, a strange knight turns up, silent and anonymous in his armour, and the tale proceeds towards its tragic conclusion.

This is a story full of portents, hauntings and miracles, generational curses and staggering coincidences, noble heroes, swooning heroines and dastardly villains — not to mention the endlessly prattling servants. It also has not a little absurdity — the giant helmet falling on Manfred's heir wouldn't have been out of place in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It certainly isn't especially frightening to the reader.

It's been suggested that Walpole was well aware of the absurdities in the story, and that he didn't actually take his work very seriously. Certainly, he didn't seem to have anticipated the birth of an immensely successful literary genre that spread not only throughout the English-speaking world, but all across Europe, and whose literary heirs have ranged from Charlotte Brontë to the Marquis de Sade, and in the 20th century H.P. Lovecraft to Barbara Cartland.

Ultimately, I wouldn't rate The Castle of Otranto as a great work, certainly not in the same league as Vathek, let alone Frankenstein. Perhaps, like many trail-blazers, it suffers from the fact that the novelty alone was enough in its day. From a modern perspective, the plot comes over as incredibly clichéd, and it progresses largely by coincidences and non-sequiturs. Though the shortcomings in the writing may be partly put down to the conventions of the time, the two masterpieces that share the volume read much more easily and naturally.

Nevertheless, I'm glad I've read it, and I'd suggest it would be worth anyone's while to try it. It isn't very long, and you'll be witnessing the exact point at which the modern horror tradition and the modern romantic tradition both had their birth.

¹ Robert Walpole never actually held the title of prime minister, which didn't become an official government position till the end of the 19th century, but he originated the concept of one minister dominating the government, in place of the reigning monarch actively heading it. Walpole held the posts of First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons, with his allies in other key roles. "Prime Minister" was a description applied sarcastically by his enemies.

² Or not. There appears to be some evidence that, far from deliberately taking poison, he accidentally ODed on prescription medicine.

³ Jane Austin had a love-hate relationship with these authors. She read them voraciously, but also mercilessly parodied the genre in Northanger Abbey.

⁴ The original meaning of "romantic" was resembling the mediaeval romances, so called simply because they were written in the "romance languages" (ie those derived from Latin). The word was almost interchangeable with "gothic", but the two terms became applied to the two diverging branches of the genre and are now poles apart.

The images of Horace Walpole, painted by Joshua Reynolds in 1756, and an illustration from a 1794 German edition of The Castle of Otranto are both in the public domain.

What Real World?

There are two boringly inevitable questions fantasy writers and readers are asked about their favourite genre.  One is, "Why read/write fantasy?" to which, of course, the short answer is, "Why not?" with the supplement, "Why don't you ask the same question about any other fiction?"

The other, which also has a short answer, is, "Why don't you read/write books set in the real world?"  The answer to that, of course, is, "What real world?"

The fact is that no fiction, of any kind, is set in some objective world that we all inhabit.  All authors invent a world to set their stories in; it's just that fantasy authors are more honest about it than most.

There are many ways of doing this, some more subtle than others, but perhaps the two main methods are the choice of what to include and exclude, and the presentation of moral beliefs as fact.

The inclusion issue, of course, can skew what we see as reality in any context.  Some years ago, there was a TV advertisement for one of the "quality" newspapers (I forget which) that was based on the proposition that you have to see the whole picture in order to know what's happening (which, naturally, that paper provided). 

It presented three short clips.  In the first, a skinhead youth runs up to a respectable-looking man on the street and shoves him hard.  In the second, the same skinhead is lounging on a street-corner when a police car draws up.  An officer leans out and shouts, and the skinhead turns and runs away from the car.

The third clip shows the whole scenario.  The man is standing under a cradle of bricks that's coming loose.  The skinhead, alerted by the officer's shouted warning, runs over and, at some risk to himself, shoves him out of the way just as the bricks come crashing down.  Without telling a single lie, the first two clips had the skinhead tried and convicted, whereas he's actually a hero.

Of course, even this isn't "the whole picture".  That might include the reasons why the accident happened (personal carelessness or corporate corner-cutting), who the man was waiting for, why the skinhead was at a loose end, what in his background made him risk his life to save the man... and so on, right back to the Big Bang.

In a work of fiction, some aspects of the "real world" are included, and some aren't.  This may be nothing more than what is or isn't relevant to the story, but even so, the author has to choose what story to tell.  It's often been pointed out, for instance, that Jane Austen's novels include none of the poverty, vagrancy and social unrest that was widespread at the time.  That doesn't mean she was unaware of it, or even unconcerned about it as a person, but she chose to write stories in a fictional reality in which those things didn't exist.

That doesn't make the stories "wrong" or even unrealistic.  They're very realistic about what she chose to present, and no author can cover everything.  It does mean, though, that they're set in a world of their own.

The presentation of moral belief as fact is a more complex issue.  Consider, as an example, a familiar type of character: the maverick cop who ignores the rules, and sometimes the law, to get the bad guy.  This can take place in either of two distinct realities (or a spectrum in between): the reality in which liberals are allowing criminals to rule the streets, and only ignoring the rules can safeguard decent people; or the reality in which the rules are there to protect the innocent, and ignoring them destroys lives.

This isn't just a matter of what happens in the story.  The different versions are actually set in different fictional realities, in which the author's belief (or the belief s/he thinks will appeal to the target reader) is a universal fact.  These are invented worlds, just as much as anything produced by fantasy.

Does it matter?  Ideally not.  When fantasy readers read of fictional realities, we understand them in the spirit they're meant: we learn broad lessons from the characters and situations or we just enjoy them (preferably both) but (apart from the very few who are always going to be out of touch) we don't believe in their objective reality.

Unfortunately, not all consumers of fiction have had our practice, and often seem to believe precisely that various kinds of popular fiction are objective reality.  Soap operas are particularly adept at creating this illusion, since their stock-in-trade is that they're presenting some kind of slice of life, even though they're doing nothing of the kind.  I've had arguments with otherwise intelligent and level-headed people who've based their arguments about the real world on what's happened in Eastenders or Coronation Street.  If they're challenged, of course, they'll acknowledge that it's happened that way because of the author's choice, but it doesn't seem to occur to them without the challenge.

Fictional realities are essential for stories.  No story could be written without them, and they only become a problem when the reader or viewer isn't aware of their presence.  Perhaps those people should practice by reading fantasy.

So, the next time you're asked, "Why read fantasy?" perhaps you could simply answer, "To keep in touch with reality."

Avoiding Clichés Like the Plague

In 1830, the novelist Edward Bulwer Lytton published a new novel, Paul Clifford.  At that time, the most usual way to start a novel was either to give a potted biography of the protagonist, or else to treat the reader to a lecture on the moral or philosophical theme of the story.  Bulwer Lytton, however, wanted to pitch the reader straight into the mood of his tale, as writers now are encouraged to do, so he opened with the immortal words, “It was a dark and stormy night...”

It wasn’t Bulwer Lytton’s fault that, nearly two centuries later, his fine opening would have become one of the most notorious of all clichés, beloved alike of parodists and beagles.  In the context of 1830, it was actually a pretty strong way to start a novel.

The English language is full (as is any language) of phrases and sentences coined long ago by some genius that are used thoughtlessly (and often incorrectly) by millions today.  It doesn’t matter too much if these are from well-known and respected sources, such as Shakespeare or Dickens (or even the final scene of Casablanca) since enough people realise that these are quotes and not meant to be original.  When the source is more obscure, this can be different.

Just as very few people today read Bulwer Lytton, I’d be surprised if anyone reading this piece has seen the 1931 film The Last Flight.  A tale of GIs going AWOL in Europe after World War I, it includes a scene where one character is badly gored jumping into a bullring in Spain on an impulse.  Asked why he’d done it, his friend comments, “Well, I guess it seemed a good idea at the time.”

Although it’s not known for sure, this appears to have been the origin of a phrase that can only be used now with an element of self-mockery.  It’s an excellent phrase, though, and easy to see why it’s become such a cliché.

And that’s the point: clichés aren’t intrinsically bad.  Quite the reverse: whether they’re phrases or plot elements, they only become clichés because they were originally such great ideas that everyone wanted to use them, not terrible things to be avoided like the plague.

Avoid like the plague.  For centuries, the plague was the scourge of Europe.  Imagine a combination of AIDS, SARS and bird-flu, and then multiply it by at least ten.  It terrified people, and anyone who heard that phrase would have felt in their guts just what it meant to need that badly to avoid something.

The phrases and situations authors try to avoid were all great ideas at one time or another.  What could make a better story than the heir to a great throne being raised in obscurity, only to recognised at the crucial moment?  Or two people who start as enemies and find themselves falling in love against their will?  The problem is that they’re too good ideas, and countless thousands of writers before us have already taken advantage of the fact.

That doesn’t mean these ideas or phrases can’t still be used, just that authors should avoid reaching for them automatically, rather than thinking of new ideas for themselves.  If a clichéd situation is what must result from the characters and situations you’ve created, then by all means use it – but use it, rather than just repeat it.  There’s always going to be a new twist, and unexpected approach, that can make the tiredest cliché fresh and exciting.

Like writing tragedies in blank verse, all clichés worked triumphantly in their day, but should only be used now if it’s the right, inevitable way to do it.  You might say that they all seemed like good ideas at the time.

What Is Fantasy?

What is fantasy?  Well, we all know, don’t we?  At least, we know when we’ve  read a fantasy novel, but that’s not quite the same.  This article was inspired by a discussion on the excellent fantasy-writers.org, and I thought I’d try to go into some detail about my thoughts.

In one way, it’s irrelevant.  There’s good fiction and bad fiction, and quite a large proportion of good fiction (though by no means all) resists being pushed into convenient pigeon-holes and left there.  When I start with a blank sheet of paper (or more likely a blank Word file) I’m not thinking “how do I make sure this is fantasy?”  I’m thinking “how do I make this as good as I can?”  The fact that it usually comes out as fantasy is my personal taste.

Defining fantasy, or any other type of fiction, is descriptive, not prescriptive.  Its primary purpose is for marketing, as a shorthand for saying that this book contains X, Y and Z which, if it’s well written, I usually enjoy, rather than U, V and W, which I can take or leave.  Once we move into “you must include X, Y and Z, because you’re writing fantasy,” we’re descending very quickly into formula fiction.

I’d say that the primary division in fiction is between speculative fiction (including fantasy) and realistic fiction, although even here there are overlaps, such as some kinds of magic realism.  In medieval Iceland, one of the world’s great fiction-producing cultures, the primary division for narrative was between “true-seeming sagas” (including both realistic fiction and historical and biographical narratives) and “lying sagas” (fantasy – “lying” didn’t have a particularly negative connotation and only signified something unbelievable).

Speculative fiction incorporates the broad sub-categories referred to as science fiction, fantasy and supernatural horror (as opposed to stories of torture and serial killers, which are really extreme thrillers) and incorporating genres that don’t quite fit into any of those three, such as cyberpunk, steampunk, alternative history and slipstream.  It should be noted that none of the three sub-categories should really be referred to as genres – fantasy, for instance, incorporates a number of distinct genres, such as sword & sorcery, epic fantasy and paranormal romance.

It might be said that realism seeks to mirror the real world as it is, while speculative fiction seeks to extend experience beyond the real world.  At first sight this seems reasonable, but it raises a fundamental problem: what is the real world?  In the Icelandic example above, for instance, “lying sagas” told of gods and dragons and dwarves and enchanted hoards, but any “true-seeming saga” could include elements like ghosts and curses.  To those who wrote and read the stories, after all, these were simply part of the real world as it was.

These problems aren’t restricted to ancient cultures, though.  A fair proportion of people in western, developed countries believe in ghosts, for instance.  (For the record, my response to that question would be “it depends what you mean by ghosts.”)  If I write a ghost story, does it count as speculative to the sceptics and realistic to the believers?

It goes beyond that, though.  I’d contend that all fiction, and probably most non-fiction narrative, too, is set in an imaginary world.  Most of these fictional realities, as I call them, are very like the world we see around us, but each is filtered through a specific person’s perceptions and assumptions, as well as the needs of the story s/he’s writing.

To take an example, two authors might write stories about a maverick cop who ignores the rules in pursuit of suspects.  In one story, this will enable him to protect society against dangerous criminals, despite the bleeding-heart liberals who protect the bad guys.  In the other, he’ll destroy innocent lives by riding roughshod over rules that are there to protect basic rights.

The difference between these two stories isn’t a random issue about what happens in it.  They take place in different realities, where the way the author sees the situation (or chooses to see it) actually is the way the world works.  All authors of fiction, and many journalists, historians and others, consciously or unconsciously create a world in which the story they wish to tell will work.  Fantasy writers are just honest about it.

So, at what point does the invention become speculative – or fantasy?  Perhaps we could say that a story becomes speculative if it includes a component or event that couldn’t happen in the real world, either present or historic – but then we’re back to the problem that there isn’t a consensus about that.  There are also many kinds of realism and lack of it.  Poor examples (though certainly not all examples) of genres such as romance or thriller, and certainly TV soap operas, are rife with characters behaving in ways no human ever has behaved or ever will.  Does that make them fantasy?

It’s also possible to write a story in which the plot as a whole relies so much on coincidence that it’s difficult to believe that such a sequence of events could actually happen.  Some of Dickens’ novels fall into this category, for instance – without needing to bring up the plain fantasy of A Christmas Carol.  Nevertheless, if we examine each individual event, we’d be hard put to find a single non-realist link in the chain.

Perhaps the best way of defining it is that realism includes only types of event which the current state of science could confidently acknowledge as possible.  If a narrative includes events that rely on collective belief or suspension of disbelief, it should be counted as speculative fiction.  Individual knowledge or belief doesn’t apply here.  On a personal level, I only believe that Australia exists, since I haven’t directly experienced it.  On the other hand, someone might know that ghosts exist through direct experience.  Nevertheless, as far as the human collective is concerned, Australia is a proven fact, while ghosts are a working hypothesis, which may or may not be proved one day.

So what does speculative fiction include that realism doesn’t?  If it’s science fiction, it may include the assumption of scientific laws that may be true but haven’t been shown to be so, or else the effect of scientific laws being different from those we know.  Horror may involve supernatural beings, magic or curses working, or different planes of existence.  Both alternative history and steampunk involve the world having developed in a different way from the one we know.

Fantasy can incorporate most of these – especially magic – as well as other elements such as worlds like our own that aren’t speculated as being reachable.  Perhaps the difference between fantasy and the other types of speculative fiction is that it has no need to explain.  Science fiction postulates laws of nature to underpin the events.  Horror explains less, but it requires the reader to believe, even if only by suspension of disbelief, that the magic or supernatural beings fit into the world as we know it.  Alternative history relies on defining the point of divergence.

Fantasy sometimes explains itself, of course.  As I pointed out at the start, defining types of fiction is a matter of convenience, not of necessity, and it pleases some fantasy writers to explain how the fantasy works; but that’s an extra.  Fantasy asks not “how could this happen?” but “what would it be like if this could happen?”  At root, fantasy isn’t about the magic, or the dragons, or the exotic worlds: it’s the question “what if?”

Then again, perhaps we could just say that fantasy is Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian, Songs of Ice and Fire, Perdito Street Station and things like that.  That’s a much easier answer.