Charles Robert Maturin, also known as Charles Maturin or C.R. Maturin, was an IrishProtestant clergyman (ordained by the Church of Ireland) and a writer of gothic plays and novels. Born in Dublin, Ireland, on 25 September1782, he attended Trinity College. His first three works were published under the pseudonymDennis Jasper Murphy and were critical and commercial failures. They did, however, catch the attention of Sir Walter Scott, who recommended Maturin's work to Lord Byron. He died in Dublin on 30 October1824. Honoré de Balzac and Charles Baudelaire later expressed fondness for Maturin's work, particularly his most famous novel, Melmoth the Wanderer.
That influence can be clearly discerned in the plays of CharlesRobertMaturin, an Irish clergyman, whose three tragedies—Bertram; or, The Castle of St. Aldobrond; Manuel; and Fredolfo—were produced in London in the years 1816 and 1817.
Maturin’s Bertram, with its gloomy “Byronic” herovillain, its strained sentiment, its setting in castle and monastery and its attempt at the portrayal of frantic passions, has all the vices of a vicious order of tragedy.
Maturin, in later years, admitted that his acquaintance with life was so limited as to make him dependent on his imagination alone (and he might have added the imagination of other dramatists) for his characters, situations and language.
Feeds |
Contact