The Comic Tragedy of Mere Men and Women: The Ambiguously Distracting Use of Laughter in The Castle of Otranto and Its Prefaces

Abstract

This paper attempts to analyze the curious effects of the comic scenes in The Castle of Otranto (1764) through a close reading of Walpole's famous prefaces to the novel. The comic scenes evoke an incongruous dramatic response and contradict the claims mad