RT Article
T1 Poe and the Apocalyptic Sublime: “The Masque of the Red Death”
JF Religion and the arts
VO 23
IS 5
SP 489
OP 515
A1 Cook, Jon 1953-
LA English
YR 2019
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1698779178
AB 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.
K1 Burke
K1 Apocalyptic
K1 beautiful
K1 Cholera
K1 Grotesque
K1 Sublime
DO 10.1163/15685292-02305002