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...

全面介紹

Saved in:  
書目詳細資料
主要作者: Cook, Jon 1953- (Author)
格式: 電子 Article
語言:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
載入...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
出版: Brill [2019]
In: Religion and the arts
Year: 2019, 卷: 23, 發布: 5, Pages: 489-515
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Poe, Edgar Allan 1809-1849, The masque of the red death / 聖經啟示文學 / 升華的 / Burke, Edmund 1729-1797, A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful
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 霍亂
B Grotesque
在線閱讀: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
實物特徵
總結: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.
ISSN:1568-5292
Contains:Enthalten in: Religion and the arts
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15685292-02305002