SOURCE: "Proto-Gothicism: The Infernal Iconography of Walpole's Castle of Otranto, Orbis Litter grum, 41, 1986, pp. 199-212.

In the essay that follows, Frank explores the iconography of The Castle of Otranto as a fully developed Gothic inversion of positive value systems.

The amazing preeminence of the Gothic novel from the death of Smollett in 1771 to the publication of Sir Walter Scott's Waverley in 1814 saw the ascendancy of many varieties of horror and the proliferation of many types of terror. Historians of the Gothic are still debating how many Gothics were written during these four frantic decades and they continue to make deeper inquiries about why the Gothic dominated English literature between Smollett's death and Scott's first successful novel.¹ Whatever the answers to these questions of quantity, intention, and literary influence might be, the fact is undeniable that the scores of Gothic titles which flooded the literary market-place during the period...