|
|
Article: More than a gravestone: Caleb Williams, Udolpho, and the politics of the gothic.
- Article from:
- Studies in the Novel
- Article date:
- March 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 University of North Texas. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
I am interested in a political art...an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures and uncertain endings. An art--and a politics--in which optimism is kept in check and nihilism at bay.
--William Kentridge (1992)
William Godwin's Things As They Are, or The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794) is now regularly published with two endings, both of which take place in the courtroom. In the first Caleb accuses his former master, Falkland, of being a murderer and of having persecuted Caleb relentlessly for having discovered this. Caleb's story is hardly given a hearing and in the following fragmentary postscripts, which he writes from prison, he ...