The cruel
stepmother is disguised as a haughty, scheming marchioness in
_The Sicilian Romance_. The ogre drops his club, assumes a veneer
of polite refinement and relies on the more gentlemanlike method
of the dagger and stiletto for gaining his ends. The banditti and
robbers who infest the countryside in Gothic fiction are time
honoured figures. Travellers in Thessaly in Apuleius' _Golden
Ass_, like the fugitives in Shelley's _Zastrozzi_ and _St.
Irvyne_, find themselves in robbers' caves. The Gothic castle,
suddenly encountered in a dark forest, is boldly transported from
fairyland and set down in Italy, Sicily or Spain. The chamber of
horrors, with its alarming array of scalps or skeletons, is
civilised beyond recognition and becomes the deserted wing of an
abbey, concealing nothing worse than one discarded wife,
emaciated and dispirited, but still alive. The ghost-story, which
Ludovico reads in the haunted chamber of Udolpho, is described by
Mrs. Radcliffe as a Provencal tale, but is in reality common to
the folklore of all countries. The restless ghost, who yearns for
the burial of his corpse, is as ubiquitous as the Wandering Jew.
In the _Iliad_ he appears as the shade of Patroclus, pleading
with Achilles for his funeral rites. According to a letter of the
younger Pliny,[11] he haunts a house in Athens, clanking his
chains.
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