Reading Order
The Monk Reading Order
The Monk (1796) by Matthew Gregory Lewis is the most transgressive of the Gothic novels — a sprawling, extravagant, explicitly sexual, and genuinely supernatural investigation of religious hypocrisy and the destructive power of repressed desire. The monk Ambrosio has lived a life of such austere piety that he has become the most admired preacher in Madrid; he has, in fact, never been tempted, and his apparent virtue is therefore untested. He is tempted by Matilda, a woman who disguises herself as a novice to be near him; their relationship leads him from one transgression to the next — seduction, rape (of the innocent Antonia), murder, incest (by accident), and finally a pact with the Devil. Lewis was nineteen when he began the novel; it was published when he was twenty and caused an immediate scandal — he was accused of blasphemy, obscenity, and corrupting public morals. The Monk is the anti-Radcliffe: where Radcliffe uses the Gothic to investigate female vulnerability and survival with the supernatural explained away, Lewis uses it to investigate male transgression with the supernatural taken literally and the sexual content made explicit. Its influence on Romantic and Gothic fiction was enormous.
Where to start
The Monk (1796) — the complete novel, in the Oxford World's Classics or Penguin Classics edition. Best Gothic novel reading order: The Castle of Otranto → The Mysteries of Udolpho → The Monk → Frankenstein → Dracula.
Complete The Monk Book List
- 1Buy
The Monk
Matthew Lewis·1796·The complete novel — Ambrosio, Matilda, Antonia, and the Devil. The Oxford World's Classics edition edited by Howard Anderson is the standard scholarly edition; Lewis was nineteen when he wrote it - 2Buy
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Ann Radcliffe·1794·The companion — Emily St. Aubert and Montoni. The companion as the Gothic text Lewis was partly reacting against: where Radcliffe uses the explained supernatural and avoids explicit sexuality and male transgression, Lewis takes the Gothic into territory that Radcliffe refused - 3Buy
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley·1818·The companion — the creature and his creator. The companion as the Gothic novel's transformation: Mary Shelley uses the Gothic conventions Lewis had developed (the transgression, the supernatural compact, the catastrophic consequence) to investigate questions of creation and responsibility - 4Buy
The Castle of Otranto
Horace Walpole·1764·The companion predecessor — the founding text. The companion as the origin: where Walpole established the conventions of the Gothic, Lewis radicalized them — taking the supernatural from the melodramatic to the genuinely demonic, and taking the sexual transgression from the implied to the explicit - 5Buy
Vathek
William Beckford·1786·Beckford's companion — the Caliph Vathek's pursuit of supernatural knowledge. The companion as the Oriental Gothic tradition: both The Monk and Vathek are organized around a figure of power whose transgression of moral and supernatural limits leads to catastrophic punishment, both use the supernatural literally and explicitly, and both are saturated with a particular kind of orientalist excess - 6Buy
Melmoth the Wanderer
Charles Maturin·1820·Maturin's companion — the wandering figure who offers release from suffering in exchange for the soul. The companion as the fullest development of the supernatural compact that Lewis established in The Monk: Melmoth is what Ambrosio's pact with the Devil would look like if it were organized around the entire history of European transgression rather than one Spanish monk's fall - 7Buy
Dracula
Bram Stoker·1897·Stoker's companion — Count Dracula in Transylvania and London. The companion as the late Gothic realization of the same transgressive supernatural: Dracula inherits from The Monk the explicitly sexual supernatural threat (Dracula's relationship to the women he attacks is explicitly sexualized in ways that go back to Lewis's Ambrosio-Antonia relationship) - 8Buy
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde·1890·Wilde's companion — Dorian's portrait and his corruption. The companion as the aestheticist Gothic: both The Monk and The Picture of Dorian Gray are organized around a beautiful young man whose inner transgression is hidden by an external perfection, and both investigate the relationship between aesthetics, morality, and the supernatural consequences of abandoning moral constraint
The Monk — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Monk about by Matthew Lewis?
The Monk is about Ambrosio, a Spanish monk who has lived such a life of austere piety that he has become the most admired preacher in Madrid — but whose virtue has never been tested. He is tempted by Matilda, a woman who disguises herself as a novice to be near him; their sexual relationship begins his fall. From there, each transgression leads to the next: Ambrosio becomes obsessed with the innocent Antonia, commits rape and murder to possess her, and discovers too late (through a typically Gothic revelation) that Antonia was his sister and Matilda a demon who engineered his fall to harvest his soul. The novel ends with the Devil collecting Ambrosio's soul and throwing him into a ravine. It is simultaneously a Gothic shocker, a Sade-influenced investigation of sexual transgression, an anti-Catholic satire, and a serious investigation of the relationship between repression and desire.
Was The Monk considered obscene?
The Monk was considered obscene, blasphemous, and morally corrupting immediately after its publication. The Monthly Mirror declared it 'a work which no parent should permit to fall into the hands of a child'; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, reviewing it in the Critical Review, called parts of it 'most libidinous and shameless' even while admiring its power; and a prosecution for obscenity was seriously threatened. Lewis, who was the son of a respectable family and at the time an MP, was sufficiently alarmed to produce a revised, bowdlerized edition. The censored passages primarily concerned the sexual content (the Ambrosio-Antonia relationship), the anti-Catholic satire (the Inquisition scene), and the demonic supernatural (Matilda's revealed nature). Modern editions restore the original text. The novel has been recognized by subsequent readers — from Baudelaire to Mario Praz — as one of the founding texts of the transgressive literary tradition.
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