Abstract
This chapter looks at Charles Robert Maturin through his major literary achievement Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). By more closely analysing the Calvinist theology utilised as the required anti-Catholicism within the genre at the time, it argues that the gothic energy stems from a set of paradoxes and tensions. These can be seen biographically and as part of the Irish historical context, but more importantly, in terms of the fundamentals of the genre, the force mainly emanates from another central paradox: the attraction of the repulsive and voyeurism as an inevitable component of any moralising tale. The textual lacunae of the novel contribute to an implied problematisation of epistemological desire. By a brief analysis of the phenomenology of the eye, the chapter ends by concluding that Maturin essentially confirms the excess of desire while apparently trying to do the opposite.
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Wrethed, J. (2021). Charles Maturin Revisited. In: Bloom, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Gothic Origins. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84562-9_27
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