illusions but instead treated as actual occurrences, albeit in a superstitious medieval manuscript which our narrator claims to have edited rather than composed.

Hello! You asked about the supernatural in The Castle of Otranto.

If you are a fan of gothic literature, you might be interested to know that Horace Walpole's 18th Century novel is the precursor for all future Gothic fiction. Walpole influenced a slew of Gothic authors, including Bram Stoker, Edgar Allen Poe, and Daphne du Maurier.

In his novel, Walpole attempts to combine Old Romance with New Romance. Old Romance greatly focuses on the supernatural and the fantastic. New Romance is more down to earth. In combining the two, Walpole is able to present ordinary characters working amidst extraordinary circumstances. 16th Century England saw the reign of Henry VIII, who started the Anglican Church in order to circumvent Catholic Church rules about marriage. The king wanted to marry Anne Boleyn but the Church was not keen on dissolving his first marriage to the Catholic queen, Catherine of Aragon. All Gothic architecture at the time was almost always religious in structure: they were churches, cathedrals or monasteries. Henry VIII had many of these Gothic (Catholic) churches dismantled or turned over to the state. In due time, the destruction of a religious heritage, the fascination with the unknown, and the religious struggle between Catholic and Protestant England came to embody Gothic literature. The persecuted woman of Gothic fiction paralleled the persecution of the Catholic Church by Henry VIII.

Walpole's Gothic novel is filled with fantastic occurrences: whether it is a giant helmet falling out of nowhere and crushing a lord's son to death, or the ghost of Manfred's grandfather stepping out of a portrait, or a gigantic foot suddenly appearing out of thin air and another gigantic hand resting on the bannister. Walpole seems to want to tap into his readers' fascination with the world of the unknown and the terrifying. The question of inheritances, of successors and of marriage is heightened through Walpole's sometimes surrealistically supernatural elements.

Remember that the 18th Century ushered in the Age of Reason. Science, the art of deductive logic and observation were all openly lauded by Enlightenment thinkers. However, the everyday person did not cease to be fascinated and enthralled with the exotic world of magic and superstition. Walpole's familiar and sometimes farcical supernatural elements allowed his readers to relate to his story. They allowed his readers room to contemplate their own changing world: Manfred's fight to marry Isabella and secure his heir mirrors Henry VIII's bold move to create a new Church, exempt from the power of the Catholic Church.

Hope this helps you understand the place of the supernatural in Walpole's entertaining novel. Thanks for the question.

The many supernatural elements in The Castle of Otranto certainly add a lot of color and excitement to this classic Gothic novel. But it’s important to acknowledge that they’re there not just to provide ornamentation; they have an important moral function as well. In simple terms, and somewhat paradoxically, the supernatural exists to restore the natural order of things.

In this regard, it is Manfred and his ancestors who have subverted all that is natural. It was Manfred’s grandfather Ricardo who murdered the legitimate owner of Otranto, Alfonso, by poison. And so Manfred cannot be said, from a moral standpoint, to be the castle’s rightful heir. He only has possession of the castle due to an act of murderous usurpation by one of his wicked ancestors. And it is only by way of a family curse, which represents an irruption of the supernatural, that the castle of Otranto is finally given back to its rightful owner, Theodore.

Cosmic justice has ultimately prevailed, righting the wrongs of the past. The supernatural in The Castle of Otranto is presented as the source of a timeless moral order which will always eventually manifest itself, no matter how hard mere mortals like Manfred and his wicked grandfather will try to subvert it.

In The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole includes numerous gothic elements, like a setting in a mysterious medieval castle, an atmosphere of mystery and fear, an ancient prophecy, supernatural events, ladies in distress, missing heirs, and hidden identities. As the father of gothic fiction, Walpole combines all of these elements for the first time in a novel, and many others followed his lead over the next centuries.

But The Castle of Otranto is a gothic novel with a psychological side, for its characters face significant emotional and psychological stress and must make critical moral decisions. Both the stress and the moral necessity heighten the tension of the novel.

For instance, when Conrad is crushed by the giant helmet (a supernatural, gothic, and extremely strange element), Manfred goes into something of a psychological tailspin. He decides he will marry Isabella himself and either divorce or kill his wife, Hippolita. Manfred's desire for an heir makes him almost insane, and his inability to cope with his stress leads to tragedy.

Further, the psychological tension of the novel is heightened by the moral choice Father Jerome must make. Manfred pressures the priest to help him get a divorce from Hippolita, and at first, Jerome tries to play along while at the same time urging Manfred to repent and reconcile with his wife. The ruse does not work, however, and only leads to Manfred's declaration of death for Theodore, who turns out to be Father Jerome's son (for Jerome is really the Count of Falconara in disguise). The priest has quite a dilemma to cope with, and this obviously causes significant emotional stress.

Although Horace Walpole was clearly fascinated by the Middle Ages, he was still very much a man of his time in that he shared the general consensus of the late eighteenth century literati that the medieval period was one of intellectual darkness and superstition.

It's notable in this regard that Walpole feels it necessary in the preface to The Castle of Otranto to apologize for what he calls "the air of the miraculous" that pervades the story. Walpole is also at pains to distance himself from the superstitious beliefs held by his characters, lest anyone think that he shares them.

Walpole's use of medievalism can be seen, then, as providing the foundations of a colorful story rather than an expression of his own personal beliefs. Had it been thought otherwise, his reputation as a man of letters would undoubtedly have been undermined.

The most obvious example of medievalism in The Castle of Otranto is the eponymous castle, the most typical example of medieval architecture. The castle, the domain of Lord Manfred, is a place of darkness, horror, and superstition. In due course, the medieval castle would become a staple of countless gothic and horror stories, to the extent that it would become something of a cliché.

The widespread belief in the divine will is yet another element of medievalism. As a cultivated man of letters, Walpole has no time for what he regards as a ridiculous superstition, a superstition that he associates with Roman Catholicism, a widely detested religion in eighteenth-century Britain.

Allied to this is an almost pagan acceptance of the intervention of unseen powers. This attitude can be seen, along with belief in the divine will, in Manfred's acceptance of the death of his son Conrad:

Yes, sirs, fate has disposed of my son ... Whatever is the will of heaven, I submit.

To Protestant Englishmen like Walpole, such a mixture of pagan fatalism with a belief in the divine will as something inextricably linked to Roman Catholicism, which, as far as they were concerned, had still not managed to put away its medieval past. As with other elements of medievalism in The Castle of Otranto, Walpole is both fascinated and repulsed by a system of belief so very far from his own.