Shorter Novels: Eighteenth Century

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SHORTER NOVELS: EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Dr Johnson: Rasselas Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto William Beckford: Vathek introduction by philip henderson These three novels, although full of contrast, are interwoven in an historical sense. They serve to remind the reader of the inner changes coming over a self-contained society-the apogee of taste and refinement-when what had been conserved for so long found liberation in the Romantic revival. It is a period in which the sunset glow of the Augustans is caught in the pages of Johnson's Rasselas, settling into the twilight of Gothic fancy around Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, followed by a night of oriental mysticism and exotic splendour in Beckford's Vathek. Beckford, essentially a man of the eighteenth century in that his romanticism is controlled, nevertheless marks the change of climate, separated though he is by only twenty-five years from Rasselas. Rasselas, in outline (and it is difficult to communicate its quality), is an... Tovább

Fülszöveg

SHORTER NOVELS: EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Dr Johnson: Rasselas Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto William Beckford: Vathek introduction by philip henderson These three novels, although full of contrast, are interwoven in an historical sense. They serve to remind the reader of the inner changes coming over a self-contained society-the apogee of taste and refinement-when what had been conserved for so long found liberation in the Romantic revival. It is a period in which the sunset glow of the Augustans is caught in the pages of Johnson's Rasselas, settling into the twilight of Gothic fancy around Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, followed by a night of oriental mysticism and exotic splendour in Beckford's Vathek. Beckford, essentially a man of the eighteenth century in that his romanticism is controlled, nevertheless marks the change of climate, separated though he is by only twenty-five years from Rasselas. Rasselas, in outline (and it is difficult to communicate its quality), is an allegory about a prince living in a happy valley, who sets out in the world to discover something he can desire, but he finds more in the world to be endured than desired. The theme, however, is a vehicle for 'the slow and balanced periods5 which Johnson 'built up and resolved with Handelian grace5. Walpole wrote Otranto like a man possessed- often far into the night. His aim, he says, 'was to combine the marvellous with the real by [Continued on back flap Wrapper drawing by Ian Smythe Vissza