Religious Appropriation in Vathek and The Monk Anonymous College

Religion is often an important feature in Gothic literature. Authors use religion in a number of ways throughout these texts, and it is interesting to consider how their representation of religion impacts the stories that they create. One of the major examples of this is William Beckford’s Oriental Gothic novel Vathek. In this novel, Beckford manipulates Islamic faith to create elements of exoticism that create the irrational Gothic: there are genii and spirits, demons and witches, and they are all real parts of the story. With the grand and dramatic style of this novel, readers become lost in Beckford’s imagined Eastern world, only to be brought back to reality at the end of the novel by a surprisingly standard, Christian moral that warns against the dangers of pursuing knowledge beyond what is meant for man. In truth, this moral does fit the story, as it is exactly the result of Vathek’s journey and summarizes where he went wrong in a final admonishment of his behavior. At the same time, the moral seems out of place because the style of the text is so dramatic and excessive in its use of Orientalism and exoticism. The fact that the moral is so disconnected to the overall style of the text shows that the Islamic faith was a...