The Monk: A Romance

About the book

In Madrid, the monk Ambrosio attracts admiration for a holiness that seems protected from ordinary temptation. Lewis places that reputation beside other stories of attraction, confinement, and religious discipline, gradually exposing the dangers of power exercised without self-knowledge. Monasteries, hidden spaces, spectral encounters, and forbidden meetings create an atmosphere of escalating Gothic excess. The novel is interested in the distance between a public claim to virtue and the treatment of vulnerable people behind closed doors. Its intertwined narratives include both romance and severe cruelty, making fear arise from institutions as well as the supernatural. Readers encounter a world in which curiosity and desire are repeatedly driven into secrecy, where the wish to preserve appearances can make an already dangerous situation worse.

• Power and hypocrisy
• Desire
• Confinement

Why read it

For Gothic intensity that makes respectable authority as unsettling as its supernatural apparitions.

English text