Reading The Castle of Otranto | Alexandria
Read The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole. Unleashing gothic terror, Walpole's Castle of Otranto shattered literary realism by blending the supernatural with psychological fear - revealing how imagination, not reason, drives human nature. His radical insight? That horror exposes deeper truths about society than logic ever could. The first gothic novel remains a masterclass in using the irrational to illuminate reality.