A Study Of The Monk From The Perspective Of Biblical Archetype

Matthew Lewis (1775-1818) is one of the representatives of the British gothic fiction writers. His first novel—The Monk was written in his nineteen. This novel is his best-known work and also his masterpiece. When The Monk was published in1796, it caused a great sensation immediately. As one of the typical gothic novels, The Monk fully embodies the gothic features in its imageries, characters and narrative structures, and also shows the influence of the Bible. In view of the close relationship between culture and literature, this thesis tries to analyze the influence of biblical archetypes on The Monk, which adopts Frye’s archetype criticism as its theoratical support.The Bible, as a piece of literary work, occupies an important position in the history of the world literature. Meanwhile, as a great part of western culture, the Bible has a far-reaching influence on western literature. For centuries, Christianity and the Bible provide an abundant source for western literature. In many literary works it is easy to find the influence of the Bible. This thesis is meant to trace the biblical archetypes in images, characters and narrative structures of The Monk, so as to interpret the symbolical meaning of the biblical archetypes in the novel. It helps the reader to have a better understanding of the purpose of Lewis’s exposing the depravity of human nature, and helps to reveal the theme that good will be rewarded with good and evil shall find evil. In this way, Lewis aims at appealing people to do good deed. In addition, this thesis is meant to reveal Lewis’s reproach to the corrupt religion. Besides, all archetypes hidden in the novel can be traced back to the biblical archetypes, so this thesis is going to provide a more profound understanding of The Monk in the biblical cultural background.This thesis includes three parts:introduction, main body and conclusion. The introduction part has the brief introduction to the author, the work itself and Frye’s archetype criticism theory and the features of biblical archetypes, meanwhile, the literature review and the reason for choosing this theme are also discussed in this part. The main body of this thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter focuses on the biblical imageries in the novel. According to the analysis, it tries to reveal the depravity of religion and Lewis’s reproachful attitude to the evil. The second chapter is about the analysis of the biblical characters. The different experiences of those characters reflect the theme of the novel—good will be rewarded with good and evil shall find evil. In the third chapter, this thesis sets its focus on the narrative structures of this novel, in order to analyze the quote and variation of biblical narrative structure in The Monk. Meanwhile, this part consolidates the theme of the novel and emphasizes Lewis’s appealing of pursuing the good side of human nature. For the conclusion part, it is a summary of this thesis.