Content Category
Literary Criticism
Abstract/Description
The seasonal Christmas ghost story tradition pre-dates Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but the narrative is filled with holes. Some place The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole within this narrative, striving to fill the gaps that exist. Despite the novel’s publication on Christmas Eve and note in the preface that it is part of the canon of the Church of St. Nicholas, the evidence is too thin to make a definitive claim that Otranto was written as a Christmas ghost story. In fact, examining newspaper archives from the eighteenth century surrounding the publication of Otranto, delving into the historical connections between St. Nicholas and Christmas, and viewing Horace Walpole’s personal correspondence reveals little reason to suspect that Otranto was written intentionally in the tradition of Christmas ghost stories, but could have influenced the trajectory of the tradition after its publication.
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Location
B150 JFSB
Start Date
19-3-2015 11:30 AM
End Date
19-3-2015 1:00 PM
Included in
The Castle of Otranto as a Christmas Ghost Story
B150 JFSB
The seasonal Christmas ghost story tradition pre-dates Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but the narrative is filled with holes. Some place The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole within this narrative, striving to fill the gaps that exist. Despite the novel’s publication on Christmas Eve and note in the preface that it is part of the canon of the Church of St. Nicholas, the evidence is too thin to make a definitive claim that Otranto was written as a Christmas ghost story. In fact, examining newspaper archives from the eighteenth century surrounding the publication of Otranto, delving into the historical connections between St. Nicholas and Christmas, and viewing Horace Walpole’s personal correspondence reveals little reason to suspect that Otranto was written intentionally in the tradition of Christmas ghost stories, but could have influenced the trajectory of the tradition after its publication.