Exploring the perverse body: The Monk and Melmoth the Wanderer

Revenge. Obsession. Desire. Death. These are but a few of the dark and forbidding foundations pervading the genre of the Gothic horror. Though they arrive in different disguises and embodiments within the text, each awful trope is explored in ghastly detail by both characters and readers of Gothic stories. In Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer and Matthew "Monk" Lewis' The Monk, the body centers as the vehicle through which these disturbing issues are brought forth and examined. The body in its various roles and formations serves as a literary device of exploration, being a significant literal and figurative entity. Each novel is a fantastic and overwhelming passage into the darker elements of life, culminating in scenes of bodily destruction and devastation. My thesis explores the body, the Gothic, and the perversion of desire. Using theorists such as Michel Foucault and Elaine Scarry, I explore themes of perversion, pain, and death to deconstruct the body in word