Poe and the Apocalyptic Sublime: “The Masque of the Red Death”
This essay examines “The Masque of the Read Death,” one of Poe’s most allusive tales, as a striking example of the aesthetics of the apocalyptic sublime. Combining several key ideas from Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful with numerous motifs fro...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
[2019]
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| In: |
Religion and the arts
Year: 2019, Volume: 23, Issue: 5, Pages: 489-515 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Poe, Edgar Allan 1809-1849, The masque of the red death
/ Apocalypticism
/ The Sublime
/ Burke, Edmund 1729-1797, A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful
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| IxTheo Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism CB Christian life; spirituality CE Christian art |
| Further subjects: | B
Burke
B Apocalyptic B beautiful B Sublime B Grotesque B Cholera |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | This essay examines “The Masque of the Read Death,” one of Poe’s most allusive tales, as a striking example of the aesthetics of the apocalyptic sublime. Combining several key ideas from Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful with numerous motifs from biblical apocalyptic symbolism, Poe’s “Masque” was specifically designed to create an effect of sublime terror in the reader. Basing his image of mass death on the cholera pandemic of 1832, which killed thousands of individuals in Europe and America, Poe created a historically grounded parable of apocalyptic extinction with a myriad of connections with literary, biblical, and artistic tradition. Poe’s tale echoes many of Burke’s remarks on the nature and sources of sublime and beautiful effects while conveying a biblically based vision of human mortality. |
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| ISSN: | 1568-5292 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion and the arts
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15685292-02305002 |