St. Irvyne
Encyclopedia
St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian, A Romance is a Gothic horror
novel written by Percy Bysshe Shelley
in 1810 and published by John Joseph Stockdale
in 1811 in London
anonymously as "by a Gentleman of the University of Oxford". The main character is Wolfstein, a solitary wanderer, who encounters Ginotti, an alchemist
of the Rose Cross Order who seeks to impart the secret of immortality. The novel was reprinted in 1822 by Stockdale and in 1840 in http://books.google.com/books?id=cE8MAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA115&dq=wolfstein&hl=en&ei=nR48Tt_5AeaIsgKoyNiECQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=wolfstein&f=falseThe Romancist and the Novelist's Library: The Best Works of the Best Authors, Vol. III, edited by William Hazlitt
]. The novel was a follow-up to Shelley's first prose work, Zastrozzi
, published in 1810. St. Irvyne was republished in 1986 by Oxford University Press
as part of the World's Classics series along with Zastrozzi and in 2002 by Broadview Press.
(1667) by John Milton
, Book II, 681-683:
"Whence and what art thou, execrable shape,
That dar'st, though grim and terrible, advance
Thy miscreated Front athwart my way."
who seeks cover from the storm. He is a disillusioned outcast from society who seeks to kill himself. A procession of monks runs into him and saves his life. Bandits attack them and take Wolfstein to an underground hideout. He meets Megalena, whom the bandits have abducted after killing her father in an ambush. Wolfstein manages to poison the leader of the bandits, Cavigni, and to escape with Megalena. Ginotti, a member of the bandits, befriends Wolfstein.
Wolfstein and Megalena flee to Genoa
where they live together. Olympia, a woman of the town, seduces Wolfstein. Megalena, enraged by the relationship, demands that Wolfstein kill Olympia. Wolfstein is unable to kill her. Olympia kills herself.
Ginotti follows Wolfstein. Ginotti is a member of the Rosicrucian, or Rose Cross, Order. He is an alchemist who seeks the secret of immortality. He tells Wolfstein that he will give him the secret to immortality if he will renounce his faith and join the sect.
Eloise de St. Irvyne is the sister of Wolfstein who lives in Geneva
, Switzerland
. Ginotti, under his new identity of Frederic Nempere, travels to Geneva and seeks to seduce her.
Ginotti reveals his experiments in his life-long quest to find the secret of eternal life: "From my earliest youth, before it was quenched by complete
satiation, curiosity, and a desire of unveiling the latent mysteries of nature, was the passion by which all the other emotions of my mind were intellectually organized. ... Natural philosophy at last became the peculiar science to which I directed my eager enquiries.". He has studied science and the laws of nature to ascertain the mysteries of life and of being: "I thought of death---... I cannot die.---'Will not this nature---will not the matter of which it is composed---exist to all eternity? Ah! I know it will; and, by the exertions of the energies with which nature has gifted me, well I know it shall.'" Ginotti tells Wolfstein that he will reveal the "secret of immortal life" to him if he will take certain prescribed ingredients and "mix them according to the directions which this book will communicate to you" and meet him in the abbey at St. Irvyne.
In the final scene, which takes place at the abbey of St. Irvyne in France, Wolfstein finds the corpse of Megalena in the vaults. An emaciated Ginotti confronts Wolfstein. Wolfstein is asked if he will deny his Creator. Wolfstein refuses to renounce his faith. Lightning strikes the vaults as thunder and a sulphurous windstorm blast the abbey. Both men are struck dead. This is the penalty they pay for "the delusion of the passions", for tampering with forces that they neither can control nor understand in seeking "endless life".
Critics attacked the novel which received generally negative reviews. The conservative British periodical The Anti-Jacobin Review
and Magazine, in a January, 1812 review, castigated "the writer, who can outrage nature and common sense in almost every page of his book." The reviewer sought to deter readers from "the perusal of unprofitable and vicious productions."
of the time. The chapbook version was entitled Wolfstein; or, The Mysterious Bandit and was published and printed by John Bailey at 116, Chancery Lane in London in about 1815. The chapbook version was a condensed version of the novel meant for popular consumption, serving the same function as a paperback would. The chapbook sold for sixpence.
The story is described on the title page as "A Terrific Romance" with an epigraph by Ossian
: "A tale of horror, of murder, and of deeds done in darkness." Added to Wolfstein was the story The Bronze Statue, A Pathetic Tale by another author.
Gothic fiction
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story"...
novel written by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
in 1810 and published by John Joseph Stockdale
John Joseph Stockdale
John Joseph Stockdale was an English publisher and editor with something of a reputation as a pornographer...
in 1811 in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
anonymously as "by a Gentleman of the University of Oxford". The main character is Wolfstein, a solitary wanderer, who encounters Ginotti, an alchemist
Alchemist
An alchemist is a person who practices alchemy. Alchemist may also refer to:-People and groups:*The Alchemist , a hip hop music producer and rapper*Alchemist , an Australian progressive metal band...
of the Rose Cross Order who seeks to impart the secret of immortality. The novel was reprinted in 1822 by Stockdale and in 1840 in http://books.google.com/books?id=cE8MAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA115&dq=wolfstein&hl=en&ei=nR48Tt_5AeaIsgKoyNiECQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=wolfstein&f=falseThe Romancist and the Novelist's Library: The Best Works of the Best Authors, Vol. III, edited by William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt (registrar)
William Hazlitt was an English author and translator, best known for his Classical Gazetteer and for overseeing the posthumous publication and republication of many of the works of his father, the critic William Hazlitt.The younger Hazlitt stayed on good terms with both parents despite their...
]. The novel was a follow-up to Shelley's first prose work, Zastrozzi
Zastrozzi
Zastrozzi: A Romance is a Gothic novel by Percy Bysshe Shelley first published in 1810 in London by George Wilkie and John Robinson anonymously, with only the initials of the author's name, as "by P.B.S."...
, published in 1810. St. Irvyne was republished in 1986 by Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
as part of the World's Classics series along with Zastrozzi and in 2002 by Broadview Press.
Major characters
- Wolfstein, a solitary wanderer, an outcast
- Ginotti, also known as Frederic Nempere, an alchemist, member of the Rosicrucian, or Rose Cross, secret sect
- Megalena de Metastasio, befriends Wolfstein
- Cavigni, leader of the bandits
- Steindolph, a bandit
- Ardolph, chosen as chieftain of the bandits after the death of Cavigni
- Agnes, serves the bandits
- Olympia della Anzasca, seduces Wolfstein in Genoa
- Eloise de St. Irvyne, Wolfstein's sister
- Chevalier Mountfort, a friend of Ginotti/Nempere
- Fitzeustace, befriends Eloise
- Madame de St. Irvyne, Eloise's mother
- Marianne, Eloise's sister
Epigraph
The epigraph for chapter three is from Paradise LostParadise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
(1667) by John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
, Book II, 681-683:
"Whence and what art thou, execrable shape,
That dar'st, though grim and terrible, advance
Thy miscreated Front athwart my way."
Plot
The novel opens amidst a raging thunderstorm. Wolfstein is a wanderer in the Swiss AlpsSwiss Alps
The Swiss Alps are the portion of the Alps mountain range that lies within Switzerland. Because of their central position within the entire Alpine range, they are also known as the Central Alps....
who seeks cover from the storm. He is a disillusioned outcast from society who seeks to kill himself. A procession of monks runs into him and saves his life. Bandits attack them and take Wolfstein to an underground hideout. He meets Megalena, whom the bandits have abducted after killing her father in an ambush. Wolfstein manages to poison the leader of the bandits, Cavigni, and to escape with Megalena. Ginotti, a member of the bandits, befriends Wolfstein.
Wolfstein and Megalena flee to Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
where they live together. Olympia, a woman of the town, seduces Wolfstein. Megalena, enraged by the relationship, demands that Wolfstein kill Olympia. Wolfstein is unable to kill her. Olympia kills herself.
Ginotti follows Wolfstein. Ginotti is a member of the Rosicrucian, or Rose Cross, Order. He is an alchemist who seeks the secret of immortality. He tells Wolfstein that he will give him the secret to immortality if he will renounce his faith and join the sect.
Eloise de St. Irvyne is the sister of Wolfstein who lives in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. Ginotti, under his new identity of Frederic Nempere, travels to Geneva and seeks to seduce her.
Ginotti reveals his experiments in his life-long quest to find the secret of eternal life: "From my earliest youth, before it was quenched by complete
satiation, curiosity, and a desire of unveiling the latent mysteries of nature, was the passion by which all the other emotions of my mind were intellectually organized. ... Natural philosophy at last became the peculiar science to which I directed my eager enquiries.". He has studied science and the laws of nature to ascertain the mysteries of life and of being: "I thought of death---... I cannot die.---'Will not this nature---will not the matter of which it is composed---exist to all eternity? Ah! I know it will; and, by the exertions of the energies with which nature has gifted me, well I know it shall.'" Ginotti tells Wolfstein that he will reveal the "secret of immortal life" to him if he will take certain prescribed ingredients and "mix them according to the directions which this book will communicate to you" and meet him in the abbey at St. Irvyne.
In the final scene, which takes place at the abbey of St. Irvyne in France, Wolfstein finds the corpse of Megalena in the vaults. An emaciated Ginotti confronts Wolfstein. Wolfstein is asked if he will deny his Creator. Wolfstein refuses to renounce his faith. Lightning strikes the vaults as thunder and a sulphurous windstorm blast the abbey. Both men are struck dead. This is the penalty they pay for "the delusion of the passions", for tampering with forces that they neither can control nor understand in seeking "endless life".
Reception
The novel, originally intended as a much longer "triple decker", circulated as part of the "circulating libraries" which were popular at that time. This was a source of revenue for the publisher of the novel. Shelley ended the novel abruptly, deciding not to develop or integrate the two strands. The result was a much shorter work.Critics attacked the novel which received generally negative reviews. The conservative British periodical The Anti-Jacobin Review
Anti-Jacobin Review
The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, or, Monthly Political and Literary Censor , a conservative British political periodical, was founded by John Gifford [pseud. of John Richards Green] after the demise of William Gifford's The Anti-Jacobin, or, Weekly Examiner...
and Magazine, in a January, 1812 review, castigated "the writer, who can outrage nature and common sense in almost every page of his book." The reviewer sought to deter readers from "the perusal of unprofitable and vicious productions."
The Wolfstein Chapbook
The novel was popular enough, however, to be made into a chapbookChapbook
A chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...
of the time. The chapbook version was entitled Wolfstein; or, The Mysterious Bandit and was published and printed by John Bailey at 116, Chancery Lane in London in about 1815. The chapbook version was a condensed version of the novel meant for popular consumption, serving the same function as a paperback would. The chapbook sold for sixpence.
The story is described on the title page as "A Terrific Romance" with an epigraph by Ossian
Ossian
Ossian is the narrator and supposed author of a cycle of poems which the Scottish poet James Macpherson claimed to have translated from ancient sources in the Scots Gaelic. He is based on Oisín, son of Finn or Fionn mac Cumhaill, anglicised to Finn McCool, a character from Irish mythology...
: "A tale of horror, of murder, and of deeds done in darkness." Added to Wolfstein was the story The Bronze Statue, A Pathetic Tale by another author.
Sources
- Sandy, Mark. "St Irvyne or the Rosicrucian". The Literary Encyclopedia. 20 September 2002, accessed 12 April 2009.
- Behrendt, Stephen C. Edited by, with Introduction, and notes. Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne. Broadview Press, 2002.
- Antippas, Andy P. "The Structure of Shelley's St. Irvyne: Parallelism and the Gothic Mode of Evil." Boyette, Purvis E., editor. Tulane Studies In English, Vol. 18, New Orleans, Tulane University, 1970.
- Finch, Peter. (1999). "Monstrous Inheritance: The Sexual Politics of Genre in Shelley's St.Irvyne." Keats-Shelley Journal: Keats, Shelley, Byron, Hunt, and Their Circles, 48, pp. 35–68.
- Frigo, Gabriele. “St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian: Shelley davvero rosacrociano ad Oxford––1810-11?” Quadernede de Lingue e Letterature, 9 (1984): 33-35.
- Grande, James. "The Original Frankenstein, By Mary Shelley with Percy Shelley, ed. Charles E. Robinson: To what extent did Percy Bysshe Shelley work on 'Frankenstein'? A new analysis reveals all." The Independent, Sunday, 16 November 2008.
- Hogle, Jerrold E. "Shelley's Fiction: 'The Stream of Fate'." Keats-Shelley Journal: Keats, Shelley, Byron, Hunt, and Their Circles, 30 (1981), pp. 78–99.
- Jeaffreson, John Cordy. The Real Shelley: New Views of the Poet's Life. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1885.
- Jones. Frederick L. (1934). "'Alastor' Foreshadowed in St. Irvyne." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 49: pp. 969–971.
- Lauritsen, John. The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein. Dorchester, MA: Pagan Press, 2007. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote the Preface to Frankenstein and contributed at least 4,000-5,000 words to the novel.
- Goulding, Christopher. (2002). "The real Doctor Frankenstein?" Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 95(5): 257-9. Christopher Goulding: "My thesis is that she [Mary Shelley] got what science she knew from Percy Shelley."
- "Scot's monster role played up". BBC News, May 1, 2002. "[Mary] Shelley: Knew little of science". Christopher Goulding: "[W]e might now give some credit to the time spent six years previously by her husband-to-be in the study of a retired Scots physician in Windsor."
- Goulding, Christopher. (November, 2006). "Shelley's Cosmological Sublime: William Herschel, James Lind, and 'The Multitudinous Orb'." Review of English Studies.
- King-Hele, Desmond. (1967). "Shelley and Dr. Lind." Keats—Shelley Memorial Bulletin, 18: 1 -6.
- King-Hele, Desmond. Shelley: His Thought and Work. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1971.
- Mishra, Vijay. The Gothic Sublime. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994.
- Murphy, John V. The Dark Angel: Gothic Elements in Shelley’s Works. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1975.
- Olcheski, Rachel. (2008)."The Influence of the Gothic on Shelley’s St. Irvyne and 'The Wandering Jew'."
- Peck, Walter E. "Interchapter II: The Sources and Significance of St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian", pp. 90–100. In Shelley: His Life and Work. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1927.
- Rajan, Tilottama. "Promethean Narrative: Overdetermined Form in Shelley’s Gothic Fiction." Shelley: Poet and Legislator of the World. Bennett, Betty T. and Stuart Curran, editors. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. pp. 240–52.
- Roberts, Marie. Gothic Immortals: The Fiction of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. NY: Routledge, 1989.
- Stewart, Trevor. Enlightenment in the Alps: Shelley's Forgotten 'Rosicrucian' Novelette, St. Irvyne (1811) . Revised edition. Septentrione Books, 2011.
- Seed, David. "Shelley’s ‘Gothic’ in St. Irvyne and After." In Essays on Shelley, Miriam Allott, ed. Liverpool University Press, 1982, 39-70.
- Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne. (The World's Classics). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
- Whatley, John. (December, 1999). "Romantic and Enlightened Eyes in the Gothic Novels of Percy Bysshe Shelley." Gothic Studies, 1:2, pp. 201–21.
- Edmundson, Mark. Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism, and the Culture of Gothic. Harvard University Press, 1999.
- Hedesan, Jo. "The ‘Good Vampire’ Archetype: A Brief Incursion into the Origins of Vampire Stories." Esoteric Coffeehouse, December 15, 2008.
- Summers, Montague. The Vampire, His Kith and Kin. Forgotten Books, 2008. Originally published in 1928.
- Birkhead, Edith. The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance. BiblioBazaar, 2006. pp. 104–127. Originally published in 1921 in London by Constable.
- Brewer, William Dean. The Shelley-Byron Conversation. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1994.
- Zimmerman, Phyllis. Shelley's Fiction. Los Angeles, CA: Darami Press, 1998.
- Shelley, Mary, with Percy Shelley. The Original Frankenstein. Edited and with an Introduction by Charles E. Robinson. Oxford: The Bodleian Library, 2008. ISBN 978-1851243969