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Melmoth the Wanderer

CHRIS BALDICK (ESSAY DATE 1989)

SOURCE: Baldick, Chris. Introduction to Melmoth the Wanderer, by Charles Robert Maturin, pp. vii-ix. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

In the following essay, Baldick discusses Maturin's place in the Gothic tradition and examines several themes in Melmoth the Wanderer.

Upon his release from prison in 1897, Oscar Wilde travelled to France under an assumed name carefully contrived to announce him as both martyred saint and blasted sinner: it was 'Sebastian Melmoth'. For, as Wilde well knew, the name of Melmoth still echoed in France, as it did no longer in Ireland or England, with the notoriety of high Romantic despair and damnation; it was the badge of the eternal outcast, of his grandiose self-hatred, and of his withering scorn for heaven and earth. It was, still more appropriately, something of an heirloom, because the author of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
   1. Charles Robert Maturin (Story Date 1825)
4. General Commentary
   1. Robert Lougy (Essay Date 1975)
5. Title Commentary
   1. Melmoth the Wanderer
6. Further Reading