ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a wider textual and contextual analysis of The Monk. In etymological sense an enquiry into the theatrical intertextuality of The Monk would help the researcher to understand how the novel appropriates and transforms theatre and spectacle at both the level of forms and themes. Matthew Gregory Lewis informs the apparently harmless and joyous through-lines of artifice and transformation deployed by the Georgian harlequinades and other pantomimic shows with deeply unsettling, fatal – or, as we may say, petrifying – connotations. The scenes of rapid transition and the metamorphoses in The Monk have clearly lost the innocent wonderment privileged by the pantomimic transformation scenes. The influence of contemporary scenic spectacle on The Monk is intimated by the negotiations and re-elaborations performed by the novel with two specific aspects of the Georgian harlequinades. Lewis rose to the formal and cultural challenges offered by contemporary visual pleasures, popular spectacle and stage technology.
