In the preface to his third novel,

(1812), Charles Robert Maturin hinted at his continued attraction to the Gothic form, an interest made evident in his first novel,

(1807). “If I possess any talent”, Maturin wrote, “it is that of darkening the gloomy, and deepening the sad; of painting life in the extremes” (Maturin 1:iv). Where Maturin had deployed these skills in

to describe the deterioration of an aristocratic family in seventeenth-century Italy in a narrative replete with characteristic Gothic elements, in

he turned his attention to “actual life” in his native country, Ireland (Maturin 1:v). Although the result is far less overtly Gothic than

, in setting…

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Citation: Morin, Christina. "The Milesian Chief". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 February 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=166, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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