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The Satiric Grotesque in Poe's Tales of the Grotesque And Сетевой научно-практический журнал АуЧНЫЙ 100 СЕРИЯ Вопросы теоретической и прикладной лингвистики Н резуЛьТАТ UDC 821 DOI: 10.18413 / 2313-8912-2015-1-3-100-103 THE SATIRIC GROTESQUE Elaheh Soofastaei IN POE’S TALES Sayyed Ali Mirenayat OF THE GROTESQUE AND ARABESQUE Elaheh Soofastaei, PhD Student in English Literature Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication University Putra Malaysia E-mail: [email protected] Sayyed Ali Mirenayat, PhD Student in English Literature Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication University Putra Malaysia E-mail: [email protected] АBSTRACT his paper surveys the grotesque which takes a principal position in the American Tliterature since the nineteenth to the present. It outlines the evolution of grotesque from art to literary form, and its meaning that is combined from different critical works. Moreover, it describes the grotesque from the gothic to the textual analysis of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque which is a short fiction by Edgar Allen Poe as a key literary writer in the ground of the grotesque. He appears as a groundbreaking writer in the nineteenth century American literature and a fruitful influence on his followers. His grotesques are not as common as his gothic stories because the former ones are of a humorous and unusual character when compared to his other stories. In fact, his grotesques fall into the territory of satirical grotesques. s. Key words: grotesque; satire; horror; gothic; humor. №3 2015 Elaheh Soofastaei, Sayyed Ali Mirenayat АуЧНЫЙ 101 THE SATIRIC GROTESQUE IN POE’S TALES OF THE GROTESQUE AND ARABESQUE резуЛьТАТ СетевойН научно-практический журнал Introduction castles, knights in armor and chivalry; and the Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), an American supernatural, with the associations of the fearful poet and short story writer, is a well-known and the unknown and the mysterious. [3, p.7] writer in horror fiction, not only in the nineteenth century, but to date. The grotesque in both art From Gothic to Grotesque and literature is used significantly. Grotesque Gothic in fiction includes different themes and arabesque are two artistic terms which are if deformity, fear, evil, crime, punishment, and used in Poe’s Tales of The Grotesque and the death. In this genre of literature, the atmosphere Arabesque in 1840. It derives from the Italian of horror is displaced in the settings everywhere – term grotte that it means caves in English. The dungeons, secret underground passages, castles, archaic meaning of this word was the chambers dark jungles, desolated cities and houses, winding of old historical building in sixteenth century. staircases, and so on. The characters of this Such buildings had frescoes and decorative genre are mostly devils, cripples, and mysterious paintings including weird images of half-human people. Therefore, fear is the birthplace of the and half-animal beings. gothic in which writers usually try to show it Thus, it is generally accepted that the word in every part of their stories. According to the grotesque originated as a term descriptive of German critic, Wolfgang Kayser, the grotesque the fanciful murals, in which human and animal is an alienated world which instills the fear of life motifs were combined with foliage and floral rather than the fear of death. To him, decoration, found in the chambers of Roman The grotesque is a play with the absurd. In buildings excavated about 1500, particularly in spite of all the helplessness and horror inspired the Domus Aurea of Nero. [3, p.1] by the dark forces which lurk in and behind our In his short stories, he was both trying world and have power to estrange it, the truly to cash in on present interest and also satisfy artistic portrayal effects a secret liberation. the readers. He shows a penchant for the The darkness has been sighted, the ominous combination of fantasy and grotesque for weird powers discovered, the incomprehensible characters who are mostly doomed and isolated forces challenged. And thus, we arrive at a final in strange dramatic settings. interpretation of the grotesque: an attempt to Afterwards, the term of grotesque became invoke and subdue the demonic aspects of the synonymous with words of ‘irrational’, ‘irregular’, world. [7, p.188] ‘licentious’, and ‘immoral’. Although, this term In general, the characters in the grotesque extended to the field of literature in sixteenth are exaggerated because the grotesque is century in France, but its common usage in characterized by distortion or unnatural literary works started from eighteenth century. combinations of the human and animal realms. In the nineteenth century, this word extended to These characters are mostly physically deformed the kind of art that was similar to caricature in or mentally distorted characters. They are usually order to exaggerate the characters. In that time, depicted as victims of guilt, passion and insanity. grotesques were satirical pictures which were Although the themes of the grotesque are used as sarcastic ways to present social, economic, commonly contained by alienation, absurdity, political and religious themes satirically. In the ambiguity and insanity, the treatment is twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this term comic. To most of the twentieth century gothic has divorced from its archaic roots and has writers, the grotesque is a psychic phenomenon, become a big umbrella term. The distinguishing which intends to explore the levels of human of grotesque with gothic is the main reason for all experience. They succeed in locating horror misunderstandings in mystifying grotesque with within human being’s psyche, not environment. something like deformity and monstrousness. Concerning the role of comic in the grotesque, The word of gothic to Brenden Hennessy has Philip Thomson says, three principle meanings: In the discussion of the difficult role of Barbarous, like the gothic tribes of the Middle the comic in the grotesque, it was pointed out Ages – which is what the Renaissance meant by that laughter at the grotesque is not ‘free’, that the word; medieval, with all the associations of the horrifying or disgusting aspect cuts across СЕРИЯ Вопросы теоретической и прикладной лингвистики Elaheh Soofastaei, Sayyed Ali Mirenayat АуЧНЫЙ 102 THE SATIRIC GROTESQUE IN POE’S TALES OF THE GROTESQUE AND ARABESQUE резуЛьТАТ СетевойН научно-практический журнал our amusement. In particular, it accounts in The most fetid and poisonous smells psychological terms for the essential paradox everywhere prevailed – and by the aid of that of the grotesque: that it is both liberating and ghastly light which, even at midnight, never tension – producing at the same time. [10, p.27] fails to emanate from a vapory and pestilential Thus, the comic features in the grotesque are atmosphere, might be discerned lying in the by- regarded to create such contradictory influences paths and alleys, or nothing in the windowless on the mind of the reader. In total, the world habitations, the carcass of many a nocturnal of the grotesque is placed somewhere between plunderer arrested by the hand of plague in the the tragic which is realistic, and the comic very perpetration of his robbery. [4, p.193] which is fantastic. The grotesque includes two Another thing is that Poe’s characters’ names kinds: the satiric, which is usually seen in ironic seem to be undermined: the Duchess of Bless my texts; and the demonic, which results in the soul, the Marquis of So and So, the Earl of This- feeling of disgust. The grotesque in Poe’s works And-That, and his Royal Highness of Touch-me- mostly contains humor and exaggeration. His Not. Poe tries to describe his story with dramatic basic technique of satire in most of his works suddenness for the reader’s surprise. Although is a distortion which is placed in the form of the story is based on reality, the characters and exaggeration. happenings seem artificial and illusionary. It Techniques of the Grotesque makes the story a perfect synthesis of fantasy and Poe tries to look into the minds and hearts reality which is a requirement of the grotesque. of his characters to show their thinking and He succeeds in illustrating a perfect grotesque emotions to the reader. He shows his satiric character in Mr. Smith by making him a cripple goal in his grotesque and his social satires and man with an artificial eye, leg, arm, teeth, hair and he camouflages death and fear in his stories. He, a voice-enhancing machine. The writer seems to in this story, seems to criticize the poor literary hint at the truth that complete perfection is just taste of his contemporary writers. Characters a myth or a utopian ideal which happens only in like Mr. Lackobreath that is literally means ‘lack the world of imagination. The real comic irony of breath’ and Mr. Windenough means ‘enough of the story lies in our realization of the hiatus of wind’ show their roles in the story. Poe tries to between our imagination or expectations and describe with dramatic tone of unexpectedness actual reality that is what we imagine things and like when the narrator loses his breath while persons to be and what they are in actuality. abusing his wife in the story: Poe sustains a feature of suddenness and I was preparing to launch forth a new and surprise in accordance with the grotesque more decided epithet of opprobrium, which tradition. Even though all the characters and should not fail, if ejaculated, to convince her of happenings in the story are a product of the her insignificance, when, to my extreme horror writer’s imagination, the main framework of the and astonishment, I discovered that I had lost story is originated from the concrete social reality. my breath. [4, p.485] He in this story digs at the pretentiousness of All the characters and happenings in this his contemporary writers in the field of science story are a beautiful imagination of Poe.
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