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The Devil, or Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles appears frequently as a character in literature. The figure of the Devil or Satan personifies evil. Many writers have incorporated Satan into their works and some of their characters tried to make a deal with the Devil and come up on the winning side. These are their stories: The Bottle Imp (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Sorrows of Satan (Marie Corelli) Satan's Diary (Leonid Andreyev) A Modern Mephistopheles (Louisa May Alcott) The Devil and Tom Walker (Washington Irving) The Monk (Matthew Gregory Lewis) The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde) The Devil's Elixirs (E. T. A. Hoffmann) The Devil's Wager (William Makepeace Thackeray) St. John's Eve (Nikolai Gógol) The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain) Faust (Goethe)

Suffused with eroticism and focusing on the corrupting influence of power, The Monk pioneered a shocking new form of Gothic novel, where elements such as mob violence, incest and brutal murders replaced the gentler horrors of earlier practitioners of the genre such as Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe.Alma Classics is committed to making available a wide range of literature from around the globe. Most of the titles are enriched by an extensive critical apparatus, notes and extra reading material, as well as a selection of photographs. The texts are based on the most authoritative edition and edited using a fresh, accessible editorial approach. With an emphasis on production, editorial and typographical values, Alma Classics aspires to revitalize the whole experience of reading classics.

In what is widely considered to be the first Gothic novel, a monk must resist a temptation that could consume his soul Ambrosio has developed a reputation across Madrid for his piety and selflessness in his role as a monk. Left on the abbey's doorstep as a child, Ambrosio took quickly to monastic life, and his fellow monks pronounced him a gift from the Virgin Mary. Despite his virtue, his status as the abbey's favorite son is put in jeopardy with the arrival of Matilda, a woman with a terrible secret who disguises herself as a monk to be closer to Ambrosio. A sensational Gothic horror novel that is as stunning to readers today as it was two hundred years ago, The Monk is a shocking rumination of the nature of good and evil, and a morality tale that explicitly details the consequences of desire. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Voici peut-etre le plus fameux des romans gothiques (ou romans noirs), ces romans qui ont tenu un grande place dans la littérature anglaise de la fin du XVIIIe et du début du XIXe siecle et qui étaient conçus pour tenir le lecteur éveillé d'effroi la nuit. A l'époque de l'Inquisition, Ambrosio, prieur du couvent des Capucins a Madrid, est admiré pour sa vertu et la pureté de sa foi. Les fideles se bousculent pour assister a ses célébrations de messes et tremblent devant ses sermons. Cet homme rigide et pur ne se sent d'amitié que pour un jeune moine, Rosario. Mais celui-ci va révéler sa véritable identité et la vie du prieur va basculer, entraînant de nombreuses victimes dans les pires infamies...

Supernatural events, women in distress, and a corrupt clergy were popular themes in the Gothic novels of the 19th century. All of those elements, along with murder, incest, and the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition, are present in The Monk (1796), one of the era's bestselling and most influential novels.Set in a sinister Capuchin monastery in Madrid, the ever-more horrifying narrative recounts the experiences of a lustful and devious abbot, who forgoes his monastic vows in the face of temptation and sexual obsession. Seduced by an evil woman and intoxicated by desire, he assaults an innocent young girl and — to conceal his guilt — murders her mother. For these and other unholy offenses, he is apprehended and imprisoned, where he is subject to unpleasant treatment at the hands of the ecclesiastical authorities. In order to escape, he sells his soul to the devil, discovering in the aftermath the grim consequence of his horrifying acts.The most famous work in the otherwise unremarkable literary production of'Monk'Lewis, the novel's anticlericalism and heavy-breathing eroticism earned it a scandalous reputation in its time that was still intact 100 years after its publication. Today, more than two centuries later, the unvarnished crime and passion of The Monk still retain the ability to jar readers — even those inured to the violence and degradation of modern life. A masterpiece of Gothic storytelling, the book remains, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge noted,'rich, powerful, and fervid.'