A transição do grotesco das artes ornamentais à literatura de Edgar Allan Poe

Abstract

This work focuses on the investigation of the different uses of the grotesque that move from the ornamental arts to the literary art of Edgar Allan Poe, in addition to investigating the hypothesis raised by Wolfgang Kayser, who describes a passage from the short story “The mask of death red”, by Edgar Allan Poe, as the most complete and precise definition that a writer has ever devoted to the word “grotesque”. The present study also intends to support the hypothesis that Edgar Allan Poe's short stories are formed through a premeditated writing that aims to generate an effect that transcends the work and affects the reader, as well as the aesthetic category of the grotesque, which causes impressions of an emotional nature on the reader, with regard to the literary work, or on the viewer of a painting, theatrical play and even in reality, as the grotesque is present everywhere. In Edgar Allan Poe's short stories, the grotesque is established through dissonant aspects such as the comic and the horror that focus on human monstrosity and usually cause sensations of astonishment, fear and laughter. In this sense, the aspects of the grotesque that are tensioned between the comic and the horror can be observed in Edgar Allan Poe's “Hop-Frog”, through an internal transition of the phenomenon that goes from Bakhtin to Kayser. To succeed in this investigation, the present work had as its theoretical basis: Victor Hugo (1827), Wolfgang Kayser (1986) and Mikhail Bakhtin (1987).