Study period 4 coincided with moving house, Christmas  and my partners 30th birthday… a more organised individual might have kept up with the 5 subject work load. Alas I am NOT an organised individual and so I was forced accept a withdrawal mark, and due to fluke of unit scheduling, I am looking at delaying graduation a whole year. Not impressed by resigned to my fate I am pre reading ALL of my texts for my gothic literature unit. Most of these texts by a happy coincidence are contained within a book I have owned for over a decade and have read cover to cover on several occaisions:
The Gothic Treasury of the Supernatural.
Its somewhere on the bus, where it has cunningly hid despite its impressive girth, and illudes my vain attempts to discover it.
So I have started my preparation for engx206 using libravox recordings and have chosen Walpole’s ‘translation’ of the plight of the inhabitants of Otranto.
I’ll confess difficulty in persisting with past readings beyond the bizarre spectacle of the giant metal helmet that kills Prince Conrad but on this outing, be it though the accessibility of the audiobook format, the clear diction of the narrator or just an additional 10 years of reading experience on my part, I have been able to suspend my incredulity sufficiently to find myself, 6 hours later, at the end of the text.
What’s the verdict? Well, unwelcomed stormy sound effects aside, the reading itself was very well done, especially for a volunteer effort. But the appeal of the story still illudes me. Ridiculous, dull and long winded, I have no new love of this excercise in early dupernatural horror. Touted as one of the first gothic novels, I can certainly see its worth in the context of the evolution of a style and genre of texts, but on its own merits… I struggle to recount any part of the text which resonated with me… actually I lie, the intergenerational consequences, or the motif of the “sins of the father” struck me as quite interesting. But aside from that I am at a loss.
I don’t know what threads of literary worth I will expected to extract from the text, but I can only hope they won’t be value judgements.
Has anyone found joy in “The Castle of Otranto”?
If you have please comment, is there something I’m missing?

♤♡♢♧ morgan mushroom ♤♡♢♧