3 Deconstruction the Horror of “ The Cask of Amontillado” 5
3.1 The Image and Theme of “The Cask of Amontillado”.. 5
3.2 Horrible Soul in “The Cask of Amontillado” 6
3.3 Means to Achieve the Aesthetic Horror .. 7
4 Charm of Horror. 12
4.1 Horror Brings Purification to Human Soul . 12
4.2 Horror Produces Sublimity . 14
4.3 Realistic Significance of Allen Poe’s Horror for Today.14
5 Conclusion.. 16
Bibliography. 17
1 Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American poet, short story writer, playwright, editor, literary critic, essayist and one of the leaders of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and of the macabre, Poe was one of the early American practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of detective fiction and crime fiction. He is also credited with contributing to the emergent science fiction genre. Many men of letters in America of his same age depicted an America in its childhood by adopting a romantic tone while Poe's themes are mainly about killing, violence, death, nightmare and evil. He always disclosed the alienation and isolation between human and the world around them and the terror of the cruel society by using the gothic horror and grotesquery. Under the social and cultural background at the time in America, it's not long for the death and horror to enter people's aesthetic vision. We can imagine how hard it is for Poe to gain the understanding and appreciation of his contemporaries. As his creative techniques and literary theories are totally different from the main stream in the field of literature in his time, Poe had been misunderstood by readers and his contemporaries for quite a long time. It was until the twentieth century that the importance of Poe's literary creations had been recognized extensively by the academic world.
"The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe is really attractive. In this short story, Allen Poe not only tells us an attractive and interesting story but also shows us an impressive and powerful beauty of horror. Poe used psychology, the conceptual metaphors, symbolism and suspense to show the horror. In this essay, the study and analysis of the beauty of horror adopted by Poe is written in five parts.
Since horror things bring us so much pain, there are still so many people fall in love with gothic fictions. We can also find beauty from the horror and experience in the aesthetic pleasure. In terms of this, horror is beautiful and pleasant, Poe's gothic works offer the enjoyment of beauty for the readers and made his own particular contribution to the world literary history. As the father of detective stories, Poe made contribution to the design of modern horrible stories and detective movies.
2 Aesthetic Value of Horror
Aesthetics and the history of aesthetics as a branch of science in western countries were originated in western countries. The history of aesthetics as an important part of the aesthetic study, which is an special and isolated field. Materially, it is a history of subject of ideology, a history of various aesthetic ideas, theories and the development of the aesthetic genre. The western aesthetic has had a history of more than 2500 years since ancient Greece and Rome. But as an isolated science that is titled as “Aesthetics”, it began in Germany in the middle of the 18th century, having a history of about 200 years. Today’s aesthetics has developed into a remarkable science involved widely into philosophy, arts, psychology, sociology, mathematics, natural science and everyday life. The object of western aesthetic research is the 2500 years’ history of the development of western aesthetics.
2.1Beauty of Horror 爱伦坡一桶白葡萄酒中的恐怖之美(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_3018.html