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    El monje
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    El monje
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    El monje
    Ebook492 pages10 hours

    El monje

    By Matthew G Lewis

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    De un desarrollo sorprendente, la trama de este libro va de una leyenda que se antoja ingenua a amores escondidos, traiciones familiares, invocaciones demoníacas exitosas y la más brutal violencia. Aquí se recrean escenarios cotidianos de su tiempo. De no ser por la evidente tendencia a lo macabro y sórdido, bien podría leerse como una novela costumbrista, de recreación de la Europa del siglo XVIII. Un tiempo donde los más terribles crímenes se cometían a instancias de los monasterios y la inquisición; donde el verdadero horror daba rienda en el interior de las catacumbas; donde las cofradías religiosas actuaban con impunidad y a escondidas; un tiempo que se parece mucho al actual, por los personajes dispuestos a todo con tal de obtener venganza o satisfacción o, también, de llegar a la mujer amada.

    LanguageEspañol
    PublisherLibros Selectos
    Release dateJan 4, 2013
    ISBN9781939048936
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for El monje

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Una exquisita novela de tensión, suspenso, horror, terror y misterio. El autor Matthew . Lewis, nos ha regalado una verdadera joya literaria sobre la inquisición española, ha combinado en esta novela, poesía, leyendas y trova, amores ingenuos, amores prohibidos, creencias inocentes, apariciones y brujería, ha dado a los personajes una identidad tan peculiar, que al lector le es fácil identificarlos y darles vida, las descripciones gráficas son muy buenas, la ambientación de la trama y la atmósfera de las escenas en donde se desenvuelven las distintas historias, son bastantes claras y fascinantes. Ha llevado cuidadosamente todos los momentos cumbres de la historia y les ha dado un toque de oscuridad muy distintivo de acuerdo al escenario y personajes que lo habitan, ninguno ha estado por encima de otro y eso ha permitido que cada personaje tenga una importancia significativa dentro de la trama, pero sobre todo, la aparición del manipulador principal y el mejor personaje de todos, la ha hecho de una manera elegante, solo le dedicó las últimas páginas y no necesitó más, para dar entender de que realmente estuvo presente desde el principio sin necesidad de describirlo y ni de decir de quien se trataba y sobre todo, que conocía perfectamente el desenlace. Realmente da cuenta de los manejos de las cúpulas religiosas y políticas, pero sobre todo, muestra la pequeñez de estas cúpulas ante las fuerzas supra terrenales
    • 4/5
      This is a good book. It has its faults (the poems are a little obnoxious, some of the asides can go on for rather long, the main character has zero redeeming qualities), but it's quite a story. These days the content wouldn't be at all "shocking" but back when it was written would have been very different, Lewis was making a rather large statement with this novel. In any case, I enjoyed trying to keep ahead of the twists, attempting to guess the truth of various things. Usually I managed to guess correctly, but it wasn't the annoying sort of predictable, it was that Lewis gave bits of foreshadowing that hinted at things to come. It made it so you'd guess about the hints, and then have the anticipation of waiting for the events to progress and seeing if they'd go that way or not, and how exactly it would happen. Some of it was a little silly, and there's one character you just want to throttle, but overall a fun enjoyable read.
    • 4/5
      The biggest flaw of this Gothic horror story for me was the somewhat dated style of writing (similar to that of Defoe). I think the creepiest part may have been the very end, in which the Spanish Inquisition is investigating Ambrosio (the monk) - partly because I suspect some of the tortures described may have been really used during this period of history!I could quickly see why this book fell into disrepute during the early Victorian times, as it includes somewhat graphic (if flowery) descriptions of carnal sins and horrifying tortures. I did have to chuckle a few times at the very English repugnance of Catholics that showed in some of the descriptions! And I could see why authors such as Jane Austen parodied this type of melodrama. However, I was surprised by the fact that Ambrosio wasn't painted as entirely evil & his struggles with his conscience were sometimes quite moving.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic story of murder and lust. Nice twist at the end. The sub-plot with the imprisoned nun was fantastic and her discovery was quite stomach-turning.
    • 5/5
      Gothic novels aren't typically my genre, but maybe I should start reading them more often... I thoroughly enjoyed Matthew Lewis' "The Monk."Sure, it's book filled with depravity-- apparently the first book ever written with a priest as its villain. The book is heaped with every horror imaginable-- yet still manages to provide an entertaining story with plenty of twists and turns.(For anyone reading this edition, do not read the book jacket... it inexplicably gives away the final horrors that Lewis spent so much time building up to. Odd decision... this was the 2002 edition by Oxford University Press.)
    • 4/5
      I'm not really sure what I think of this. I can see how some people would call it Gothic and some people would just call it weird. "Feel this heart, father! It is yet the seat of honour, truth, and chastity; if it beats tomorrow, it must fall a prey to the blackest crimes. Oh, let me then die to-day! ... Folded in your arms, I shall sink to sleep; your hand shall close my eyes for ever, and your lips receive my dying breath. And will you not sometimes think of me? Will you not sometimes shed a tear upon my tomb?"It does have Gothic elements, like ghosts and spooky castles/houses/abbeys/crypts/forests and innocent damsels in distress from fiendish villains. The Bleeding Nun in particular was delightfully spooky:"The spectre again pressed her lips to mine, again touched me with her rotting fingers and, as on her first appearance, quitted the chamber as the clock told 'two'."But it also has some real Horror elements, like violent murders and crypts filled with rotting corpses. And there were some things that reminded me of Sade, like the religious cynicism and rapes. (Edit to add: after looking at a few commentaries, it looks like the extra violence was inspired by the German school of Gothic stories, and that Sade did use this as an inspiration. So...)"Redouble your outward austerity, and thunder out menaces against the errors of others, the better to conceal your own. ... she is unworthy to enjoy love's pleasures, who has not wit enough to conceal them.""The prudent mother, while she admired the beauties of the sacred writings [of the Bible], was convinced that, unrestricted, no reading more improper could be permitted a young woman."I don't know. It was interesting, but I think I would have related to it more if I'd read it when I was 20 (about the age of the author when he wrote it). At this point in my life, I like my Gothic stuff to be a bit more self-aware or goofy, and my social commentary to be a bit more hopeful.
    • 4/5
      What a long way we've come since Walpole! This book was actually scary in parts, and certainly gruesome and disturbing. Also a big shift from the "happily ever after" of most early Gothic novels.
    • 4/5
      Wow - this book was a pleasant surprise. Written in the late 1700's, I was anticipating long detailed descriptions and sentences that are hard to parse. Instead, this was gothic horror at its scariest. The story is really about Ambrosio, a well-respected monk and his fall from grace. Lots of action, good romance and quite an incredible cast of characters, including the Bleeding Nun and Lucifer himself. Very fun.
    • 5/5
      Finally, some fun in the Enlightenment. The Monk is a blast, a page-turner, chock full of insane plot twists and sinning.

      It can't be accused of being terribly well-written, so you know that old debate between eloquence and plot? If you tip heavily toward eloquence, you might not like this as much.

      But for me, clawing my way out of a pit of Oh-So-Literary books starved for plot...it's just what I needed. The only 18th-century book that I had more fun with was Voltaire's Candide.

      This is also the only 18th-century book I've read that includes magic. All the others have been resolutely set in the real world; it was surprising to me to realize that we were actually going to be horsing around with ghosts and demons here. Weird, huh? It could certainly be that I've just missed all the magic - I'm sure this can't be the only book to include it - but in general the 1700s seemed to completely eschew the supernatural. And it's not like they had no example: Shakespeare used magic in several of his plays, and The Monk is an exploration of the Faust legend that he probably heard about from Marlowe. (Some specific similarities in a couple of key scenes point to Marlowe.) I'm not a huge fan of magic-y stuff anyway, so I doubt this is what made me dislike Enlightenment literature so much; just thought it was interesting.

      ETA: Oh, it's Gothic. Stemming from Horace Walpole's 1767 "Castle of Otrando." Okay.
    • 4/5
      I can't decide if this is mock-goth or just really over-the-top-goth. I know Gothic is extreme by definition, but this one includes every cliché of the genre you can think of, plus a few elements that read really modern and self-aware. Kind of like late noir films, except with nuns, ghosts and dungeons (so, way better than late noir films).

      The thesis, inasmuch as there is one, is rather revolutionary for its time: ignorance isn't virtue, it's just ignorance. So basically, integrists who go around judging others are just scared, repressed people who should get over themselves and join the rest of us in, you know, life. And I thought I had patented that idea.
    • 4/5
      What an entertaining book, overloaded and packed with the conventions of gothic horror. Admittedly, I laughed my way through some stuff, especially the long narrations by some characters, the way events seemed to go from silly to absurd, BUT, it did justice to its genre while managing to have a good poke at hypocrisy and blind faith. The ending was awesome. I could have done without the lengthy poems, but otherwise I'm so glad I read this.
    • 4/5
      It's no coincidence that the opening epigraph of Lewis' one and only novel is from Shakespeare's _Measure for Measure_. Both works have pillars of public moral rectitude collapsing after encountering their first major temptation of carnality. Monk Ambrosio figures in for a penny, in for a pound, and starts the slide from mere sex to murder, incest, despair, and damnation. Lewis' streamlined prose abandons the detailed descriptions of Gothic architecture and Alpine vistas favored by his model Ann Radcliffe. And, in a plot of not two but four frustrated lovers, he crams many a gruesome incident and image. No Radcliffean rationalism for Lewis. Despite frequent criticms of the superstition of Spain during the Inquistion, this plot revels in the supernatural with curses, ghosts, Bleeding Nuns, Wandering Jews, and the Prince of Demons himself. Yet, despite the melodrama, there is an air of psychological realism in how Monk Ambrosio rationalizes his escalation of evil. Perhaps more disturbing is the mind of Matilda, his first lover, and her willingness to advise and aid his evil even after he has sexually spurned her. Stephen King's introduction is, like many such introductions to classic works, an unfortunate spoiler of much of the plot. However, most of his observations are valid and interesting though I'm dubious that all English novels before Horace Walpole's _The Castle of Otranto_ had moral purposes. (Lewis novel seems to have no serious moral statement except, perhaps, that the chaste life of the convent and monastery is unnatural.) Oxford University Press seems to have taken the typesetting of this edition from an earlier one. A lot of asterisks show up in the text without accompanying footnotes. A minor annoyance to a novel that holds up well after more than 200 years.
    • 5/5
      Never before has an old classic been so enjoyable. As improbable as it might seem in retrospect, I studied this book in literature class among the larger topic of gothic literature and it remains one of my favorite books to this day.Lewis pushes all the characteristics of the gothic genre to their extreme until all the situations reach the limit between absurd and parody. But in spite of all its critical humor, or maybe even because of it, the book never gives the impression of mockery - the love of Lewis for writing and the genre he inhabits permeates throughout with passionate enthusiasm.Just as interesting to study for Lewis' indeniable command of style and literary codes as it is just plain fun to read for its outrageous content, The Monk is the equivalent in book form of a rave party on crack thrown in the most respectable of cathedrals.
    • 4/5
      Published two years after Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk is still very much a gothic novel but it's also a very different style of gothic novel compared to Radcliffe's Udolpho.Whilst Radcliffe's novel focuses on creating a sense of terror in its readers (defined by Radcliffe as something that 'expands the soul, and awakens the facilities to a high degree of life'), The Monk seems intent on creating a sense of horror instead (something which 'contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them' according to Radcliffe). Where Radcliffe inspires terror by leaving things up to the reader's imagination, Lewis inspires horror by describing things in all their gory detail.This, amongst other things, makes Lewis' book a much more graphic and shocking read and it wasn't really a surprise to find in the introduction that Lewis had to remove all mentions of sexual activity, seductions, murder attempts and descriptions of unclothed female bodies as well as provocative words like 'lust' in later editions of the book.Perhaps because Lewis spells things out more for his readers, this felt like a less demanding read than The Mysteries of Udolpho; it was much easier to get into and moved a lot faster. Having said that, I think my personal preference is for Radcliffe's style of gothic writing rather than Lewis'.Radcliffe wrote The Italian in 1797 as a reply to Lewis' The Monk and The Italian is going to be my next gothic read.
    • 5/5
      It's hard to believe that this book was published in 1796. I can't even imagine how shocking this book was back then, because it certainly shocked me here in 2008. I bought the book because I was interested in reading The Italian by Ann Radcliffe and figured I should read The Monk first. I never expected to like it, but I loved it. I loved all the supernatural aspects of this book; it was something I wasn't expecting. This book can make you feel so many emotions as you read it: anger, sadness, happiness.There's nothing I love more in a book than a bunch of different characters whose stories intertwine with each other with everything unfolding with each chapter.I can't say anything else except: give it a read; you may be surprised how much you like it.
    • 4/5
      By most accounts, this is the beginning of the horror genre, and its heady mix of gothic settings, evil villains, innocent maidens, and horrific actions and circumstances--not to mention some supernatural witchcraft to balance everything out--comes together to make for a page-turning read. It's sometimes difficult to imagine readers journeying through this more than two hundred years ago, since it did a fine job of keeping me up late here in 2009.If Charles Dickens and Stephen King were ever to work together in heaven for a literary child, this might well be what would come up. Fun, dark, strange, and suspenseful---it's recommended.
    • 4/5
      Despite its antiquity (1796), Lewis's sordid tale still holds up after all these years. And its tale of religious debauchery is still pretty timely, and probably always will be. Turn down your threshold for melodrama and enjoy.
    • 5/5
      This book was censored towards the end of the 18th century. And now I know why: it is lurid. There passion, rape, incest, sex...in the monastery, convent, garden, and mausoleum. This book would no be out of date for the present as a trashy romance story. The book is a fast read, although some readers, like me, will find that the two long digressions that appear in the book will make you go back to the beginning to remember what the other characters' names are, the original plot, what happened earlier, etc. However, the digressions make for a good gothic tale unto its self. The mini-story "The Bleeding Nun" is full of horror, ghosts, midnight trysts, murder, gloomy castles, forbidden love that I did not mind the digression that much. Ambrosio becomes enamored of a novitiate in his monastery that turns out to be a woman called Matilde. She seduces him and they have sex in her bedroom. He eventually gets tired of her and sets his sight on the beautiful, innocent, doe-eyed Antonia. Matilde helps him to take away Antonia's innocence, with a very surprising twist at the end that Satan tells Ambrosio as he holds the monk over the ravine. Meanwhile, back at the convent, Agatha's brother and her lover, by whom she became pregnant in the convent garden, are attempting to retrieve Agatha from the tyrannous Mother Superior at St. Claire's convent, who punishes Agatha and will not let her go because her connections promote as an elite convent. This book was an interpretation of Ann Radcliffe's "The Mysteries of Udolpho", who countered Lewis' "The Monk" with "The Italian." "The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk" is a good biography that later turned out to be false and a similar plot structure to Lewis' work. Going more towards the literature side of things, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" features a priest as a villain as well. Also, if you're interested in reading parodies, Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey" is an excellent choice. "The Monk" was also turned into a movie called "Seduction of a Priest". (Recommendations taken from Wikipedia)
    • 3/5
      Quite different than most other "classics" that I've read. This story, while very slightly still showing it's age, could easily have been written for modern times. Except for the large side-story midway through, I enjoyed reading about the downfall of the Abbot Ambrosio. Quite a gothic read for sure!
    • 4/5
      Don't be scared off by the book's 18th century publication date: this story is as shocking and titillating as anything in modern lit. The Monk has it all: scandal, conspiracy, murder, villainy, hypocrisy, incest, rape, betrayal, ghosts, demons, corpses, and enough gruesome detail to rival an episode of CSI.The story focuses on the corruption and eventual destruction of Ambrosio, "The Man of Holiness", a Capuchin monk whose outward piety conceals vanity and a lust for power, from which seeds grow spiraling tendrils of evil that eventually destroy him, with a little help from Old Smokey himself. (Lucifer actually makes a juicy cameo appearance at the end – don’t miss it!).Love how "meaty" the story is: within the main narrative, Lewis embeds digressions and side stories that add to the entertainment and general spookiness of the story. Caught up in the main narrative (in which the Brave Cavalier Lorenzo attempts to woo the Innocent Virgin Antonia; Noble Raymond attempts to rescue his True Love Agnes from the schemes of Villainous Family Members and an Evil Prioress; and the Mad Monk Ambrosio is gradually corrupted), you may be tempted to skip these parts, but don't! Elvira's sad history, the story of Lorenzo’s brush with bloodthirsty bandits in the forests of Germany, and especially the tale of the Bleeding Nun and the Wandering Jew are fully as diverting as the main narrative. Love, too, how the author incorporates all the stereotypical elements of gothic fiction – mad monks, wicked nuns, brave knights, naïve virgins, scheming family members, crypts, corpses, devils, and sorcery – while still managing to create a story that feels fresh, literate, and well-crafted. Lewis may have picked a dubious genre, but there’s nothing dubious about his plotting or prose. Indeed, Ambrosio’s decline is presented in so gradual and logical a fashion, may shock you almost as much as it shocks Ambrosio at the end to realize how far he’s fallen, and how fast. Finally, love how the book lays the foundation for so much literature that’s come since. Reading along, you’ll catch definite whiffs of Bronte, Poe, Hawthorn, Byron, Eco, and Perez-Reverte, among others. Were I a scholar, would love to research how this text provides a bridge between the old-style horror of medieval morality plays and modern lit.Because, beneath the shock and titillation, this is at its core a morality play, in which evildoers are punished and virtue is rewarded. (Except for a few necessarily tragic consequences, because evil can’t happen without victims, after all). A little spooky, a little melodramatic, a lot entertaining, and good triumphs over evil yet again … what more do you want from a book?
    • 4/5
      This book takes a chapter or two to get into, although ti's relatively fast paced when you do. I think the plot moves along nicely and is really interested. I actually enjoyed reading it. I also appreciated Lewis' descriptive style. My only complaint is that at times it's hard to follow who's who.
    • 4/5
      Having just completed The Name of the Rose I thought I would continue the monastery theme with the Monk. My naive self even thought they would be pretty similar in content. Whereas The Name of the Rose is an excellent and well crafted mystery, The Monk is a creepy and suspenseful horror novel. The novel follows the story of two main sets of characters; the monk, Ambrosio and his love Antonia and Lorenzo and his sister Agnes. The two sets are connected in a variety of ways but for most of the story are kept separate. This is an excellent plot device as it juxtaposes the evil and corruption of Ambrosio and the honour and fidelity of Lorenzo. Ambrosio is the hero of the city. A pious and highly respected monk, he is the model that everyone else looks too. Even heroes, however, can be tempted and Ambrosio gives in to these temptations. Before he knows it he is overcome by passions and moves further and further away from the man Madrid thinks he is. He attention becomes fixed on Antonia, a young virgin in the city and become intent on her corruption. Lorenzo on the other hand has just come to Madrid. He meet Antonia and is determined to make her his bride. Before he can, however, he gets caught up trying to rescue his unfortunate sister from her covenant, in order to reunite her with her husband-to-be. Lorenzo is only working for the good of his sister (and her fiancee) whereas Ambrosio is only working for the destruction of Antonia. It's hard to miss who the good guy and bad guy are supposed to be. The book isn't completely straightforward though! There are some good twists and surprises at the end.The descriptions and dialogue in this novel, though flowery, are powerful and you can relate the settings and understand the motivation of the characters. Lewis' writing is poetic and I often found myself reading for much longer than I intended to. A couple times I found he got a little carried away and took the reader away from the main plot(s). The back-story of Agnes and her fiancee also seemed to go on for longer than necessary.Overall a beautifully written novel with some heroic and very creepy characters. It's a novel that's going to sit with me for awhile and I think will reveal even more on a second reading. The depiction of Ambrosio fall for piety to ruin is truly disturbing and makes one question their own motivations and ability to resist temptation.
    • 3/5
      This novel is all about Christian, specifically Catholic, sexual hysteria. Sex seems to determine everyone's motivation in the first volume. This makes sense when you consider that it was written by a nineteen year old for whom these obsessions were no doubt a daily occurence. Fortunately for us, he has managed to sublimate them into the form of a novel. (Which puts me in mind of E.M. Forster, who, when touched on the ass by an admirer at a tender age, promptly went home and wrote Maurice.)

      A duenna and her charge arrive in Madrid from provincial Mucia some time in the very late eighteenth century. For some reason no doubt to be made clear later, they arrive at a church where the much talked about Father Ambrosio is to speak. The father is a paragon of virtue. He has spent his thirty years entirely immersed in studies and prayer at the local Capuchin monastery. While waiting for the good father to arrive the duenna, Leonella, who is fifty-one, and her charge, Antonia, who is fifteen, are questioned by two young men and their tale of woe is gradually revealed. This is essentially a tale of Antonia's mother, seduced by a libertine, who runs away with her to the West Indies where thirteen years later he dies leaving her penniless so she must return to Spain with baby Antonia in tow to throw herself on the mercy of her outraged father.

      The wholly pure Ambrosio then spends the next sixty pages undergoing two events: the first is his heartless condemnation of a nun who has allowed herself to be seduced. She is with child but Ambrosio gives her into the hands of the prioress of her order for purposes of punishment; the second event is Ambrosio's seduction by a woman disguised as a young man, one Rosario, who has shamelessly broken the sanctity of the monastery. That at least is how Ambrosio sees it before he eventually gives way to godless and all too enjoyable rutting with the woman. These pages are tumescent with hot-blooded satanic sex. It is hard to believe they first saw the light of day in 1796. What an earth-shattering fireball this novel must have been then.

      One of the gentlemen entertaining the two new arrivals at the church is a nobleman, Lorenzo. It is his sister, Agnes, who has just been sacrificed by Father Ambrosio to the prioress. Now we enter into a long divagation narrated by the sister's nobleman lover, the Marquis de las Cisternas. First there is the interlude in the forest outside Strasborg in which the Marquis walks into a nest of banditti who wish him only ill. This is a vividly described section with lots of action and blood. At extraordinary length, the Marquis survives, as he must if we are to get the story of how Agnes becomes trapped into entering a convent by a guardian jealous of her relationship with the Marquis. This section involves some decisions on the part of the Marquis that no adult man with any romantic experience would make. In other words, the crudeness here really smacks of a nineteen year old writing his first novel. Yet the vivacity of the writing somehow continues to hold the reader despite these howlers.

      Later, we move on to Ambrosio's repeated sexcapades with Matilda (Rosario). The prioress's lie to brother Lorenzo that his sister Agnes has died in childbirth. Father Ambrosio as he overhears the prioress's evil plans for punishing Agnes on his way to an assignation with Matilda. Father Ambrosio's attempted seduction of a the young Antonia, innocent of carnal knowledge, and his deal with the devil to gain access to her lily-white body. The satisfying denouement I will not describe. Suffice it to say that Lewis's writing becomes more assured as he proceeds. By chapter 7, more than half way through, his writing becomes, as John Berryman discusses in his introduction, "passionate and astonishing."
    • 5/5
      One of my all-time favorite books. Lewis took the traditional themes and plots of gothic novels and followed them to their logical, albeit socially unacceptable, endings. Rumor is, this book offended Radcliffe so terribly that she felt compelled to rewrite it, leading to her novel, The Italian. Lewis also acknowledged the comedy inherent in the melodrama of the genre and ran with it, making for some unexpectedly hysterical scenes. If you enjoy gothic novels and don't take yourself too seriously, you have to read this.
    • 5/5
      Ah, there’s nothing like a good irreverent read over the holidays. The Monk has a plot that is “convenient” and soap operatic at times, but it’s great fun to read, containing stories within the story, and I was impressed with the fact that it was written by a 19-year-old in 1796. It can be read as an indictment of Catholicism, as commentary on the nature of men and women, a morality story, or as Gothic drama. It’s Romanticism influenced by Lewis’s exposure to Germany’s Sturm und Drang movement, and yet also infused with brutal realism and fantasy. Something for everybody! :P
    • 5/5
      I somehow managed to get through this much of my life, including a college class in gothic literature; without ever reading this book. How? It was great!
      Published in 1796 and written by a 19-year-old, it was a massive, bestselling success in its day - and it really still holds up as a fun, entertaining read.

      This particular edition had the most *awful* introduction EVER, though. (I will not dignify the author of said intro by even mentioning his name, which I had never heard before anyway.) It was snide, condescending, and totally missed the point, by criticizing gothic literature as a genre, Lewis as a writer and the Monk in general - and damning it with faint praise, for the WRONG things. (the intro was written in the '50's, before the new attention the gothic genre has gotten in academia).
      Anyway, the intro-writer was trying to judge the book as a Work of Literature, and an Exploration of the Fall of a Virtuous Man, and all that kind of crap.

      It's NOT.

      It's an intentionally blasphemous, often hilarious, tragically dramatic tale, full of sorcery, devil-worship, ill-fated (and not-so-ill-fated) love, scandal, murder, ghosts, the Inquisition, cruel nuns, spooky castles, exotic locales, torture, dungeons, beautiful maidens... and of course, the particularly evil titular Monk.
      Yes, there's some pointed commentary of the hypocrisy of many religious types, as well as some quite funny social commentary (which often seems AMAZINGLY apropos for today, considering the age of the book) - but this was a book written to entertain - and titillate. It's definitely not as shocking today as it probably was then - and the plot is not quite as tightly sewn together as modern editors demand - but it's still a rousing good read.
    • 5/5
      The 500 pages breeze by in this ridiculous Gothic soap opera.
    • 4/5
      This book was simultaneously supremely entertaining and quite disturbing. It's definitely not for the faint of heart- it has quite its share of rape, incest, torture, deals with Satan, murder, etc... The main character is Father Ambrosio, an ultra-pious monk turned raving sex fiend. It also features a couple of gallant, knightly types- Raymond and Lorenzo- and their lady loves, Agnes and Antonia, respectively. There's also the beautiful Matilda, who turns Ambrosio to the Dark Side, so to speak. The story itself focuses on Ambrosio's fall from grace, Don Raymond's attempts to rescue Agnes from crazy murder nuns, and Antonia's various misfortunes, which culminate (SPOILERZ) in her being raped and murdered by her big brother, Ambrosio. Cheers!This book does contain some rather sizable doses of anti-Catholicism and misogyny tossed into the mix, but, you know, times were different back then... Also, some of plot twists seemed a bit contrived even with the context considered, but overall it's a very enjoyable read. The language is a tad old-fashioned, but, even so, it's quite difficult to put down.
    • 4/5
      This book is marvelously ludicrous. There is so much going on, and most of it is sordid. Nuns having babies? Check. Nuns locked in cellars by other nuns? Check. Priests having affairs? Check. Demons? Check. As if you needed more convincing, the novel also features a description of the afterlife, so if you were wondering what happens, just pick this one up.

      Speaking seriously, this work is a lovely example of how the earlier novel looked when it was aimed at a certain segment of society, which would have been educated but not necessarily highly affluent people (not that the highly affluent didn't indulge, I am sure they did). It's also important to remember that books like these found their way into early circulating libraries, where they would have been presented in three installments (hence the length!). This book is 18th century smut. It's the Janet Evanovich of their time (no offense intended, smut has its place!). It's interesting that, in the 18th c., even smut had to have a moral lesson, as The Monk does. Fascinating.

      As a final note, I do think that the biggest hold up in the reading process is the lack of what we as modern readers would consider a standard plot. The plot as we now know it is a relatively modern invention, so this novel offers good perspective.

      For a novel of approximately the same time period with a different audience and purpose in mind, try Burney's Evelina.
    • 4/5
      Published in 1796, according to the introduction this is one of the foundational novels of the Gothic genre and thus horror. Interestingly, Lewis was only 19 years old when he wrote it, the same age as Mary Shelley when she published Frankenstein. The novel involves three intertwined stories: Ambrosio, the monk of the title, and his fall from grace; Don Lorenzo and his attempts to gain the hand of Antonia, and the struggles of Don Raymond and Agnes to overcome the obstacles to their union. The narrative often sounds old fashioned, and the plot is often absurd, yet the novel is engaging--enough to keep my interest through the 300 odd pages The author definitely has issues with the Catholic Church that often took the plot and many characters over the top, and there are misogynist comments at times--yet some strong female characters as well. Filled with ghosts, evil monks and nuns, bandits and pacts with Satan himself--it's also full of wit and verve, shot through with dark humor, lurid, cheesy, but great fun.