COLOMBO, Sri Lanka _ The tale of the Buddhist monk and his shiny, new Mercedes-Benz has fueled a bizarre national drama that has angered Sri Lankans and tainted a group of revered religious leaders with corruption.The monk _ leader of a hawkish Buddhist party in...

China's Shaolin Temple has demanded a public apology from an Internet user who claimed a Japanese ninja beat its kung fu-practicing monks in a showdown, a lawyer said Friday.An open letter from the temple posted on the Internet Thursday denied the fight ever took place...

A monastery will halt its egg farming business after claims by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that the trappist monks mistreated hens.Father Stan Gumula of Mepkin Abbey said in a statement late Wednesday that pressure from PETA has made it difficult for the...

Nearly 1,000 Buddhist monks, joined by thousands of their countrymen, marched in Myanmar's largest city Thursday in the biggest challenge in at least a decade to the iron-fisted junta, a show of strength rare under military rule.Authorities normally quick to crack down hard on dissent...

In the following excerpt, Summers details the composition, contemporary critical reception, plot, style, sources, translations, adaptations, and literary influence of The Monk. Only those footnotes pertaining to the excerpt below have been reprinted.

In the following essay, Kauhl examines the motif of transgression, as both a psychological and a political fact in The Monk.

In the following essay, Gose undertakes a psychoanalytic survey of The Monk, noting its "unresolved tensions" of "sexual conflict, violated taboos, and self-destructive impulses."