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Yesterday, Polidori; today, Maturin

I can't believe I'm finally reading Maturin's Melmoth at the ripe age of 26. I remember reading about it when I did my thesis on gothic romance in high school, but I could not locate a copy. Thanks to Gutenberg and the wonders of technology I have all the books at my disposal I have sought.

Anyway, those two stories were written in the same era-- the 1810's; they could not be more different. Polidori was immensely effusive in his writing style and his characters were possessed of inconquerable sensibility. Maturin, on the other hand, is as unadorned as a Victorian writer. It's remarkable to think he wrote this way at a time when no one else did.

Polidori's Vampyre was a great disappointment to me. It seems Polidori must have gotten tired of writing it and ceased to take it seriously-- the last bit seems entirely a joke. I am only in the first of Melmoth, but the characters are entirely different, very hard and straightforward. I think I will like it. From what I have read, it expands to the madhouse and the death chamber, and I would like to know how that was two hundred years ago.

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