Two Gothic Novels

I've been slow to update, and have a stack of things I've read to review, so let's do some portmanteau blogging...

Rayland Hall, or, The Remarkable Adventures of Orlando Somerville is regarded as someone significant from a scholarly point of view. It's basically a chapbook of about 36 pages that's a plagiarism of a longer work, The Old Manor House by Charlotte Smith, a 1793 work that ran to thirteen hundred pages over four volumes. Some anonymous but enterprising hack chopped it down to novella length, changed some names, and made it a much more streamlined work. Published in 1810, Rayland Hall is technically a Gothic....but only technically so. While academically interesting, Rayland Hall isn't recommended for the casual D&C fan because, honestly, it's lack in Gothic thrills and chills. There are no ghosts or treasures, but instead a cross-class love affair and questions of inheritance. While offering up some critique of the British social order, and offering a glimpse of the country during the American Revolution, it's lacking in other departments. If anything, this can be viewed as a precursor to all those "gothic romance" novels that are long on the romance but short on the Gothic.

The Cavern of Death is more like it. First published as a newspaper serial in 1793/4, it's full of the castles, ghosts, and violence that one normally expects from Gothic fiction. Another anonymous work, it at lest is longer and not a plagiarism, but an original work. Set in a faux-Germanic land similar to the territory shown in Hammer films, it gives us the adventurous Sir Albert hoping to marry his lady-love Constance, and being thwarted by a wicked Baron. But there's also a murder plot, a clutch of assassins, and a trip to the cave of the title, where we encounter a ghost, a skeleton and a bloody sword, that lead to the revelation of dark secrets. While obviously crude and brief, with no room for any real grace in the style, it still manages to be a fast-moving and entertaining read at under 100 pages.

More on the way....

A November Night in the Phantom Concert Hall

Halloween is over, the cold weather is arriving in earnest, and we've bundled up and ventured out for a concert at that lovely old restored hall downtown.

It's that in-between time...orchestras no longer need to do spooky-music programs and won't have to do any Christmas music for a while, so they can actually be a bit adventurous in the repertoire. One of the highlights of tonight's program is this piece by Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly...



This 1933 piece is based on actual Hungarian folk music, harvested by Kodaly and his friends as they traveled around the country gathering music that had never been written down. (In addition to being a composer, Kodaly was a notable educator and musicologist.) There's something lively about it that gives a little excitement to a cold night, eh?

After the concert, we slip out for a drink and a discussion of what we've been doing lately...and our plans for the holidays approaching....can they be here again so quickly?