Horace Walpole, gothic classicism, and the aesthetics of collection
Uden, James
Scholars of eighteenth-century literature have long seen the development of the Gothic as
a break from neoclassical aesthetics, but this article posits a more complex engagement
with classical imitation at the origins of the genre. In Horace Walpole’s formative Gothic
novel The Castle of Otranto, his Gothic drama The Mysterious Mother, and in the
curiosities in his villa, classical elements are detached from their contexts and placed in
startling and strange juxtapositions. His tendency towards the fragmentation of ancient
culture, frequently expressed through the imagery of dismemberment, suggests an
aesthetic not of imitation, but of collection. Moreover, rather than abandoning or ignoring
the classical, Walpole reconfigures literary history to demonstrate elements of
monstrosity and hybridity already present in Greek and Roman texts.
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