SOURCE: "Double Entendre: Rebel Angels & Beautiful Losers in John Richardson's The Monk Knight of St. John," Canadian Literature, No. 128, Spring, 1991, pp. 107-17.

In the essay below, Hurley offers a reappraisal of Richardson's The Monk Knight of St. John, focusing on themes of identity, passion, and religion. He also illustrates the novel's parallels with other Gothic and Romantic works.

Variously described as lurid, sensational, grotesque, and bizarre, John Richardson's complex and intriguing novel The Monk Knight of St. John. A Tale of The Crusades (1850) was the Beautiful Losers of its day. Response to the work evokes comparison with the reception of novels like Cohen's, Grove's Settlers of the Marsh, Symons' Place d'Armes, Davies' The Rebel Angels, or Engel's Bear (at the end of which, we recall, the female narrator who has just reclaimed her body and her sexuality enthusiastically praises Richardson and Wacousta). Modern commentary on the black sheep...