Matthew Lewis

 

Born: 9 July 1775; London

Father a politician, mother attends court

Oxford

Weimar - 1792

Attaché to the British embassy at The Hague - 1792

Enchanted by Radcliffe's Udolpho - 1794

Member of Parliament - 1796-1802

Acquainted w/Scott, Byron & Shelley

Quarrells w/his father - 1904-05

Inherits fortune & property in Jamaica - 1812

Dies: 14 May 1818; at sea; yellow fever

 

 

The Monk - 1796 The Castle Spectre - 1796 Journal of a West Indian Proprietor - 1843 (posthumous)

 

The fusion of sexuality with violence, and specifically with revenge, in The Monk is grounded in Lewis's perception of the implications of conflict between the individual sexual will and the forces inhibiting and prohibiting its expression. It is as if he gradually became aware of disastrous human potential in excess of that which can be accounted for by environmental misfortunes. What if the self is insatiable?

- Howard Anderson

 

The Audience now assembled in the Capuchin Church was collected by various causes, but all of them were foreign to the ostensible motive. The Women came to show themselves, the Men to see the Women: Some were attracted by curiosity to hear an Orator so celebrated; Some came because they had no better means of employing their time till the play began; Some, from being assured that it would be impossible to find places in the Church; and one half of Madrid was brought thither by expecting to meet the other half.

The Monk