Horace Walpole
Il Castello di Otranto

That the "Castle of Otranto" was the initiator of a new literary genre was already claimed by the English in 1764, the year of its publication. And yet, although acclaimed as the first example of a Gothic novel, the author tells us, in the preface to the second edition, that his model was Shakespeare's tragedies. This assertion explains the predominantly dialogic structure of the work and the distinctly theatrical "direction" with which Walpole makes his characters move on the scene, in a succession of intrigues, misunderstandings, and unforeseen events, until the final resolution, which, as in any tragedy, restores the order previously violated by a sacrilegious or unnatural act.

A medieval castle, a convent, underground passages, specters, a mysterious death, and a strange helmet. The lineage of Manfred against the heirs of the noble Alfonso, the love of Matilda, and that of Isabella, the virtue of Hippolita and that of Jerome. There are no novel elements such that one can assert that Walpole, in fact, invented a new literary genre. We could say that he challenges eighteenth-century Reason, with the return of the repressed, embodied by Theodore, Alfonso's grandson, whose progeny was thought to be extinct after his assassination, who "returns" to destabilize Manfred's certainties, and certainly, the nocturnal and medieval-like setting might contribute to create that "pleasing horror" that Burke attributed to works of this kind, but, in my opinion, nothing that hasn't been already read elsewhere. Moreover, the "supernatural" elements present in the novel are justified by Divine will, by "Heaven", constantly invoked by the protagonists, whereas the "Gothic" is such because it remains unjustified, because it is behind that dark mirror through which one cannot see. But it is also true that we find ourselves at the beginning of a trend that will reach its peak at the end of the following century and that, in any case, Walpole provided settings and themes not only to subsequent Gothic novelists but also to romantic or decadent authors, like Byron or Wilde, and to anyone, in that time span, who delighted in stories of fear.

And the work in question indeed falls within the realm of "delight". Imagine Sir Walpole, an eccentric gentleman, engaged in politics defending lost causes, passionate about furniture and artworks, who, to escape boredom, decides to lose himself in his fantasies, perhaps banal, perhaps already seen, but which imply a profound inner disquiet, which becomes evident only on the last page of the novel, courtesy of Theodore, who, far from being a spokesperson for traditional heroic values, instead introduces us to a new state of mind, destined to be the characteristic trait of many heroes and heroines of subsequent literary history: for the young Werther and the melancholy vampires, the knights of the damsels without mercy, and for an entire generation of poets, the beginning is undoubtedly in the end of the Castle of Otranto:

"...the young man was convinced that he could know no other happiness than in the company of someone with whom he could forever indulge in the melancholy that had seized his soul."