Materialism and The Monk

Abstract

In 1796, Matthew G. Lewis capitalised on the turmoil of late eighteenth-century revolutionary violence, and upheaval, to unleash his scandalous novel The Monk. While the supernatural Gothic may appear to characterise his work, there are distinct materialist attributes that permeate his narrative undermining his gothic schema. This essay seeks to explore Lewis' gothic materialism and how he uses it to challenge dominant dualist ontology, whilst also demonstrating that dogmatic philosophical or religious positioning is ill equipped to deal with the realities of human experience. Matthew G Lewis: Materialism and The MonkErupting upon literary sensibilities in the 1790s, the eighteenth-century Gothic was a reaction to enlightened rationalism and the Enlightenment's tendency to present experience as purely explanatory. The Enlightenment's foregrounding of reason over superstition as opposed to the Gothic's focus on the irrational and supernatural, intimates that the Gothic can be viewed as a distinctly anti-Enlightenment mode of critique. Certainly, this inclination is implicit in Matthew Lewis's scandalous novel The Monk [1796]. Critic Andrew Smith (2007) suggests that the Gothic's explicit concentration on evil behaviour and deeds, and the demonising of individuals who perpetuate such acts, was a profound retort against the horror and violence witnessed in the Terror of revolutionary France. 1 He argues that this focus counters the legacy of enthusiasm for social, political, and religious reform championed by Enlightenment thinkers and advocates. 2 Gothic scholar Fred Botting (2001) observes, it is the very rise of enlightenment reason and its associated tenets, empiricism, scientism and objectivity, that necessitated an oppositional reaction. Thus, superstition, the supernatural, sublime natural force, darkness, and violent passions -where human fear and uncertainty materialise through transgressive taboos and prohibited behaviours, became intrinsic to the Gothic genre. 3 Hence, the principal focus of the gothic was to express anxieties about the status quo. By utilising an extreme oppositional stance to the hegemonic currency of Enlightenment ideas, the gothic exposed the inherent difficulties generated by Enlightenment thought. Matthew Lewis in The Monk employs this eighteenth-century gothic schema; the supernatural, unreason, desire and taboo are essential devices in his critique of a so-called Enlightened Europe. However, there are also instances where Lewis deconstructs this schema. At times, during the narrative, he utilises contradictory juxtaposition which draws attention to the logical extremes of Enlightenment materialism. In doing so he emphasises an absolute freedom of human action through which all moral order collapses. Indeed, during the eighteenth century, materialism was beginning to take a disquieting hold in philosophical quarters. Thus paradoxically, gothic horror in The Monk can be seen as a testimonial for an antidualist, monist materialism, but also synonymously as a distinct warning of...