The Romantic period is defined by the idea of revolution. In 1816, Percy Shelley wrote that the French Revolution of 1789 was still “ the master theme of the epoch in which we live”. The French Revolution, however, left its mark not only because it implanted republican ideals, it also created a fear of its anarchic and violent aftermath. No literary genre captures the hopes and fears associated with the idea of revolution better than the Gothic genre. Charles Robert Maturin’s 1820 novel Melmoth the Wanderer captures this atmosphere perfectly. One of the earliest works of the Irish Gothic, the novel reflects both the appeal of the revolution and the conservative fear and resistance to fundamental change associated with it. The ambiguity and oscillating quality of the novel creates a feverish claustrophobia. I will apply Mikhail Bakhtin theory of the carnivalesque to explore the very modern quality of the text. Maturin’s novel illustrates the tensions inherent in the Romantic period, and I use Bakhtin’s theory to describe this tension as an attempt to describe the crisis of the traditional social order.
