The Gothic Shelf — Part 4: The Castle of Otranto — The Blood upon the Statue

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! The Gothic Shelf — Part 4: The Castle of Otranto — The Blood upon the Statue The wounded Marquis Frederic lies under his enemy's roof, and tells how a dream, a dying hermit, and a wood near Joppa led him to the gigantic sabre buried beneath the seventh tree — and to the verses written on its blade. Manfred, entering the sick-chamber, starts back from young Theodore in armour as from Alfonso's very spectre, and hears the youth's own story: carried off at five years old, a mother dead of grief in captivity, and a writing bound about his arm. Inside the castle, Matilda and Isabella confess one secret to each other, and Hippolita proposes the union of the rival houses. Manfred carries the offer of a double marriage to Frederic — and it is accepted. Then, in the convent choir, as the bargain is spoken aloud, three drops of blood fall from the nose of Alfonso's statue. Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) continues: the fourth chapter of the first Gothic novel ever written. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters 0:00 — Introduction 2:02 — The Castle of Otranto — Part Four Part Four is told whole, exactly as Walpole printed it in the novel's fourth chapter — Frederic's tale of the hermit and the sabre, Theodore's history, the princesses' confession, and the bleeding statue. Nothing in this chapter is cut. Challenges, threats and the language of menace stand as written; they are the chapter's matter, in the heightened language of 1764. The edition's own introduction and the author's period prefaces are apparatus, and are not narrated. Part Five, the novel's last chapter, continues the story in the next part of this season. Music: opening and closing themes from "Gangster Piano Symphony"; the quiet background bed under the reading is "Aqua Elegie". Source: Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764), from Project Gutenberg eBook #696 (Cassell's National Library edition) — public domain. The Gothic Shelf is an ongoing KacheliTV season of classic Gothic tales, told in parts; no completeness is claimed for the season. Retold aloud by KacheliTV — World Classics, Read Aloud.