Sarah Perry’s Melmoth, Spookiness and Fear.

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2018

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matthew Sweet talks to the author of The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry, about her re-imagining of the Melmoth story, first published in 1920 by the Irish playwright, novelist and clergyman Charles Maturin. His Melmoth the Wanderer was a critique of Catholicism following a scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for living 150 years longer. Sarah Perry's version begins in Prague with a female scholar who feels she's being watched. Plus, experts on the Gothic Roger Luckhurst and Helen Wheatley discuss the apparently perennial appeal of the Gothic in literature, cinema and on television. And, Matthew talks to Richard Maclean Smith, whose podcast and book UNEXPLAINED report on the odd, mysterious and uncanny.

Melmoth by Sarah Perry is out now. Professor Roger Luckhurst is the author of The Mummy's Curse: The true history of a dark fantasy, Helen Wheatley's publications include Gothic Television Rosemary's Baby (1968) was directed by Roman Polanski from the novel by Ira Levin. Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent horror film written, directed, photographed and edited by George A. Romero

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
0:32.4	This is the BBC.
0:34.7	So, you've succumbed.
0:36.4	You heard the Arts and Ideas podcast calling to you, like that pie in the
0:41.4	fridge. Well, my name's Matthew Sweet, and I'm here to tell you that really there's no need to feel
0:46.9	guilty. Give in to your desires. We all need ideas. We all need the arts. And you're going to get them
0:53.6	right here, right now, after this
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1:01.5	more discussion of ideas on start to the week? I'm Andrew Maher, and each week we have big names,
1:07.7	David Attenborough, Pat Barker, You've All Knower Harari, and big ideas too, on identity, war, evolution, the future of Homo sapiens.
1:18.0	Search for Start the Week podcast and enjoy.
1:21.0	Can I ask a favour of you? Tonight's programme requires a certain kind of atmosphere, and I want us to do our best, to generate it together.
1:30.4	We may speak of the devil tonight, we may speak of moral evil, and that sense we get sometimes, don't we, that there's somebody just behind us on the edge of our field of vision?
1:41.6	We're here in the studio at Broadcasting House, me, the novelist
1:45.3	Sarah Perry, the woman who coiled us in the Essex serpent, and three who I'll describe for the
1:50.5	moment as cultural historians of unease, Helen Wheatley, Roger Lookhurst and Richard MacLean
1:56.7	Smith. But first, let's have some music, a bit of Vosjac, a bit of Rousalca.
2:07.6	Very good. Now, let's welcome in the darkness. You may be at home or on the move, but do what
2:15.0	you can. Shut your eyes. Kill the lights.
2:18.6	That's what Luke, the producer, is doing here now,
	...

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