Charles Maturin, The Milesian Chief

Christina Morin (University of Limerick)

Ed. by Anne Markey, Dublin City University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.4: Irish Writing and Culture, 400-present.
Vol. editors: Paul Delaney (Trinity College Dublin), Anne Markey (Dublin City University), Ian Campbell Ross (Trinity College Dublin), Sinéad Sturgeon (Queen's University Belfast)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1811

Places

Ireland, Republic of (Eire) (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

In the preface to his third novel, The Milesian Chief; a Romance (1812), Charles Robert Maturin hinted at his continued attraction to the Gothic form, an interest made evident in his first novel, Fatal Revenge: or, The Family of Montorio (1807). “If I possess any talent”, Maturin wrote, “it is that of darkening the gloomy, and deepening the sad; of painting life in the extremes” (Maturin 1:iv). Where Maturin had deployed these skills in Fatal Revenge to describe the deterioration of an aristocratic family in seventeenth-century Italy in a narrative replete with characteristic Gothic elements, in The Milesian Chief he turned his attention to “actual life” in his native country, Ireland (Maturin 1:v)…

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1226 words

Citation: Morin, Christina. "The Milesian Chief". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 February 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=166, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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