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Masque Of The Red Death Essay

Decent Essays

The Masque of the Red Death was published in May of 1842 by Edgar Allen Poe. It’s clearly an allegorical story, one that can be more narrowly defined as a parable. A parable is defined by Encyclopedia Britannica as a fable-like story which uses humans instead of animals, and draws an analogy “between a particular instance of human behavior…and human behaviour at large”. It’s specifically designed to deliver a moral message or lesson, and the one in Masque is that no one can escape death, no matter what artifices are placed to obstruct it. This is interesting, but the real magnificence of the tale is in the literary genre in which Poe tells it, which is the Grotesque. The definition of this term in literature is a bit indistinct, but can be reduced to a couple of key characteristics: The Grotesque fits in between the real and the fantastic, while being simultaneously centered between funny and frightening (The Grotesque). Poe’s …show more content…

The goriness and irony of Prince Prospero’s revel tell only half the story of the danse macabre.” (Di Renzo, 193)
Harold Bloom argues that the novella isn’t grotesque at all, but Arabesque: “The Mask of the Red Death is one of Poe’s most memorable Arabesques” (Bloom, 13). While this is partially true because of the psychological aspects of the piece, it’s not entirely accurate as a representation of the entire work.
The creation of terror, the juxtaposition of the real and supernatural, the absurdity and almost comical aspects, all the poles of what we understand the grotesque to mean have been solidly touched upon in The Masque of the Red Death. Poe himself refined and encapsulated a coherent meaning for the grotesque, and the tale stands as a perfect example of what a good representation of it should strive to

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