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Key Examples in The Castle of Otranto
The First Edition Preface
Explanation and Analysis—An Unreliable Author:
Walpole sets up an unreliable narrator in an unusual way in this novel through the two Prefaces. He variously disavows, disclaims, and then reclaims the truth and the origin of the story. On this contradiction, the writer Sir Walter Scott quotes a letter from Walpole in his introduction to The Castle of Otranto, in which Walpole explicitly says that he "wished [the novel] to be believed ancient.” Interestingly, Walpole wanted the book to be "believed ancient," but the First Edition Preface itself is not all that believable. This contradiction compromises the reliability of his narrator's position and the information they share.
Walpole also lavishly praises the "original" author of the novel in the First Edition Preface, saying in the same paragraph that:
The beauty of the diction, and the zeal of the author (moderated, however, by singular judgment), concur to make me think, that the date of the composition was little antecedent to that of the impression. [...] Such a work as the following would enslave a hundred vulgar minds, beyond half the books of controversy that have been written from the days of LUTHER to the present hour.
Related Themes:
