Melmoth’s Afterlives: Romantic Bicentennials
Wednesday 14 October 2020 – Wednesday 18 November 2020
Hosted by Manchester Metropolitan University and in affiliation with the ‘Romantic Bicentennials’ initiative, Melmoth’s Afterlives celebrates the bicentenary of the publication of Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). An elusive and demanding text, Melmoth is nonetheless a significant one. Engaging an eclectic range of Romantic fictional genres, including the National tale and the historical novel, it evidences the malleability of generic boundaries in this period. It thus posits a challenge to established histories of the Gothic and, indeed Romanticism, whilst also providing a springboard for later Gothic experimentation.
Published in October 1820, contemporary reviewers characterized Maturin’s Melmoth as a belated Gothic horror novel; one that would have been more at home in the 1790s – that decade when publications of Gothic Romances boomed – than in 1820. Yet, contrary to these initial responses, Melmoth’s self-reflection on the Gothic mode, its representation of the doomed Faustian figure of Melmoth himself, and its complex narrative structure have all had lasting influence on the Gothic imagination from the nineteenth century onwards. This influence is evident in Honoré de Balzac’s Melmoth Reconciled (1835), Oscar Wilde’s moniker ‘Sebastian Melmoth’, and in Sarah Perry’s recent re-writing Melmoth (2018), to give but three examples. Commencing in October 2020, Melmoth’s Afterlives aims to explore and evaluate the many afterlives of Melmoth, which, like Melmoth, have traversed the world. Over the course of six weeks, the project offers a series of online events that will appeal to both an academic and general audience. Events include: virtual reading group sessions; a research seminar with guest speakers, Dr James Kelly (Exeter), Professor Catherine Lanone (Sorbonne), and Professor Lisa Lampert-Weissig (California, San Diego); a plenary lecture by Dr Christina Morin (University of Limerick); and an interview with the award-winning novelist, Sarah Perry.
Free registration for the reading groups, the plenary lecture and Perry interview is available via Eventbrite - click here to book. For further information, contact: melmoth2020@mmu.ac.uk The organisers would like to thank the KSAA & BSA for their generous support of this project.