Why do I need another name ?

In a time best forgotten, before I became a member of DCUNS, people called me Jonathan. Then a friend of mine posted me sth. he swiped from one of the Redbrick boards, and I felt compelled to reply. Everyone on the DCUNS system had a username, but I was breaking the rules, by using his a/c, and as such I didn't have a username of my own, so to avoid confusion with the owner of the a/c, I chose my own username and tagged it onto the end of all my subsequent posts. Of course, later that year when I got an a/c of my own it seemed only natural, right and proper that I'd keep the same username, which I did.

So, where did I get the name from in the first place ?

Well, I was reading a biography of Oscar Wilde, and one of the little FunFacts (tm) I remembered from that book was that he once used the alias 'Sebastian Melmoth'. Further there was a little footnote saying that this name came from Irish Gothic Horror.

Well, that was news to me, so I decided to check it out.

The book refered to was entitled "Melmoth - The Wanderer" and was written by an Irish protestant priest named Charles Robert Maturin.

So What's the Book About ?

Well, it's classic Gothic Horror - involving all the usual devices like underground passages, crumbling manuscripts etc. I guess you could call it Frankenstein's lesser known, and lower-bred half-cousin.

Plotwise it involves a young Melmoth finding out about his family history, and discovering that another far older Melmoth had made a pact with the devil, and in order to fulfill part of the bargin had to go from place to place terrorising people.

Much of the story is told through flashbacks, and we see glimpses of the horrors of poverty, and the Spanish Inquisition etc., amidst this we also witness extreme innocence in the form of Immalee, the heroine of the novel.

Unlike Frankenstien, with it's somewhat circular multiple POV's, Melmoth the Wanderer is told as a sequence of stories within stories, within stories - which can be somewhat confusing but is also highly interesting as you begin to wonder where things will pop back to the present.

Tickle Me Melmoth !

'Melmoth' can be pronounced in two ways, but I prefer the 'th' to be silent. :)