Gothic Elements in The Masque of the Red Death英语毕业论文.docx

Gothic Elements in The Masque of the Red DeathIntroductionEdgar Allan Poe was one of the early American practitioners of short story. His melancholy brilliance, passionate lyricism and his tormented soul made him one of the most widely read writers in American literature.Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Masque of the Red Death was first published in 1842. In this macabre tale, Prince Prospero sealed himself and a thousand of his friends into the abbey of a castle in order to protect them from a deadly pestilencethe red deaththat was ravaging the country. But when the people was indulging in a lavish costume ball in order to distract themselves from the suffering and death outside the walls, the red death, disguised as a costumed guest, entered and claimed the lives of everyone present. The story is narrated in a manner which gives it the quality of a myth, allegory or fairy tale, exploring themes of man's fear of death, sin, madness, and the end of the world.This tale is a prime example of Poe's gothic horror fiction. Poe evokes a dark and eerie mood in a story that focuses on images of blood and death, while the personification of the red death lends an element of the supernatural. The Masque of the Red Death embodies Poe's mastery of the short story; in addition, it illustrates his literary philosophy. According to Poe, a short story should be tightly focused so that every word, from beginning to end, contributes to the overall effect. In The Masque of the Red Death, powerful imagery and an illusive narrative voice are tightly woven into a macabre tale of horror with insight into the human condition.I A brief introduction to The Masque of the Red DeathThe Masque of the Red Death is a remarkable and bloodcurdling story written by Edger Allan Poe, who is very crafty in the gothic stories by adding the gloomy, mysterious, death- related elements. He has a mad sense of imagination which makes him paint the rooms and the castle to the reader using words. The plot is about the disease which is spread in the country and terminated almost half of the population, and the prince makes a ball and invites thousands of his favorite knights and ladies to party till death, until the arrival of an unfortunate guest. Poe uses specific literary techniques within his short story to create a gothic mood using specific imagery.1.1 A brief introduction to Allan Poe On January 19, 1809, Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Poe's father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three and John and Frances Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia. John Allan, a prosperous tobacco exporter, sent Poe to the best boarding schools and later to the University of Virginia, where Poe excelled academically. After less than one year of school, however, he was forced to leave the University when Allan refused to pay his gambling debts.Poe returned briefly to Richmond, but his relationship with Allan deteriorated. In 1827, he moved to Boston and enlisted in the United States Army. His first collection of poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems, was published that year. In 1829, he published a second collection entitled Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. Neither volume received significant critical or public attention. Following his army service, Poe was admitted to the United States Military Academy, but he was again forced to leave for lack of financial support. He then moved into the home of his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia, in Baltimore, Maryland.Poe began to sell short stories to magazines around this time, and, in 1835, he became the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. He brought his aunt and twelve-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, with him to Richmond. He married Virginia in 1836. Over the next ten years, Poe edited a number of literary journals including the Burton's Gentleman's Magazine and Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia and the Broadway Journal in New York City. It was during these years that he established himself as a poet, a short-story writer, and an editor. He published some of his best-known stories and poems including The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Raven. After Virginia's death from tuberculosis in 1847, Poe's life-long struggle with depression and alcoholism worsened. He returned briefly to Richmond in 1849 and then set out for an editing job in Philadelphia. For unknown reasons, he stopped in Baltimore. On October 3, 1849, he was found in a state of semi-consciousness. Poe died four days later of "acute congestion of the brain." Evidence by medical practitioners who re-opened the case has shown that Poe may have been suffering from Rabies.Poe's work as an editor, a poet, and a critic had a profound impact on American and international literature. His stories mark him as one of the originators of both horror and detective fiction. Many anthologies credit him as the "architect" of the modern short story. He was also one of the first critics to focus primarily on the effect of the style and of the structure in a literary work; as such, he has been seen as a forerunner to the "art for art's sake" movement. French Symbolists such as Mallarmé and Rimbaud claimed him as a literary precursor. Baudelaire spent nearly fourteen years translating Poes works into French. Today, Poe is remembered as one of the first American writers to become a major figure in world literature.1.2 A brief introduction to The Masque of the Red DeathA terrible disease called the red death has struck the country. It's incredibly fatal, horribly gruesome, and it's already killed off half the kingdom. But the ruler of these parts, Prince Prospero, doesn't seem to care about his poor, dying subjects. Instead, he decides to let the kingdom take care of itself while he and a thousand of his favorite knights and ladies shut themselves up in a fabulous castle to have one never-ending party. Wine, women, music, dancing, fools Prospero's castle has it all. After the last guest enters, no one else can get in the Prince has welded the doors shut. That means no one can get out, eitherAbout five or six months into his stay, Prospero decides to have a spectacular masquerade ball (a ball where the guests where masks and costumes). The setup is weird and wild, just like the Prince who designs it. The ball takes place in a suite of seven rooms, each one dressed up in a different color: blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, and black. The black room, which looks like death, is awfully creepy it's got dark black walls, blood red windows, and big black clock which chimes so eerily every hour that everybody at the party stops dancing and laughs nervously. Most of the frolicking masqueraders are too weird out to go into the black room.Anyway, the party's in full swing and everybody's having a wild time when the clock strikes midnight. Everyone stops dancing and falls momentarily silent, as usual. Then some of the dancers notice a guest no one had seen before, wearing a scandalous costume. Whoever the new guest is, he's decided to dress as a corpse, a corpse who died ofthe red death. He's so frighteningly lifelike (deathlike?) he freaks everybody out, and he slowly starts "stalking" through the frightened crowd. When Prince Prospero sees the ghostly guest, he's furious that someone would have the nerve to wear such a costume, and orders him to be seized and unmasked. But no one has the guts to do it, including Prospero himself.The red death masquerader passes within a few feet of the Prince and starts to walk through the rooms, heading toward the black room. Prospero loses it and runs after him in a rage, drawing his dagger as he approaches. But just as Prospero reaches the edge of the black room, the corpselike guest suddenly whirls around to face him, and Prospero falls to the ground, dead. The shocked crowd throws itself at the guest, only to discover in horror that there's nothing underneath the mask and costume. The red death itself has come to the party. One by one the guests die, spilling their blood all over Prospero's lavish rooms. The candles go out, leaving only "darkness, decay, and the red death." A brief introduction to Gothic fictionGothic fiction (sometimes referred to as Gothic horror) is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. The effect of Gothic fiction depends on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of essentially Romantic literacy pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel.2.1 Origin of Gothic fictionGothic literature is intimately associated with the Gothic Revival architecture of the same era. It is way similar to the gothic revivalists' rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the neoclassical style of the Enlightened Establishment, the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere. The ruins of gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations thus the urge to add fake ruins as eyecatchers in English landscape parks. English Protestants often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, characterized by harsh laws enforced by torture, and with mysterious, fantastic and superstitious rituals. In literature such Anti-Catholicism had a European dimension featuring Roman Catholic excesses such as the Inquisition (in southern European countries such as Italy and Spain).2.2 Main features of Gothic fictionIn traditional Gothic fictions, there are usually five features. First of all, in traditional Gothic fictions, authors like to set up scenes in and around an old castle which is sometimes seemingly abandoned or occupied. Around the castle, there is always no other buildings and no other people living around it. In the castle, dark or hidden staircases, trap doors, secret rooms and passages which may lead to a cellar, all of these add to the mysterious flavor of the work. Ruined sections of the castle are often used as part of the story line.Secondly, the atmosphere of the Gothic fiction is always pervaded by a threatening feeling and the plot is surrounded by some unknown things, such as the unknown parentage, the mysterious disappearance of the characters or some other supernatural or unexplainable things which are often ghosts or giants walking or inanimate objects become live at night. Besides these unknown things, the mysterious atmosphere is also laced with an ancient prophecy and characters dream visions. The ancient prophecy is often connected with the castle itself or its inhabitants and is not readily explainable. The characters dream vision is often considered as an anticipation of coming events or an omen of death occurs.Thirdly, characters in Gothic fictions are often excited and sometimes are even overwrought. They are controlled by their anger, sorrow, surprise and especially terror because what they have suffered, such as unknown criminals and a feeling of imminent doom. In these situations, crying, breathlessness and panic are frequent.Next, female characters are essential. They are often defined as weak and sentimental, so they are the best choice to arouse readers sympathy and pathos. Under the gothic phenomena, women often face events that make them feel terrified and almost make them become insane. A lonely, distressed, and oppressed female character is often the essential figure of gothic novels, for her sufferings are much more contagious and attractive to the readers. The reason why women have to suffer these is that in fictions they are often abandoned and have no one to protect them. Last but not the least, in Gothic fictions, there is often one or more male characters who have power, such as the king, the lord of manor, father or guardian. These males manipulate the woman into an intolerable act, for example, the woman is asked to marry a man she doesnt love or to commit a crime. Gothic elements in The Masque of the Red Death Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets hereditary curses and its intensity created by profuse employment of the vocabulary of the gothic , including vocabulary that express meanings of mystery , fear, terror, or sorrow, surprise, haste, anger , largeness , and darkness.3.1 Creepy locationWhen we think of Gothic literature, one of the first things that comes to our mind is setting. The action takes place in and around an old castle, sometimes seemingly abandoned, sometimes occupied. The castle often contains secret passages, trap doors, secret rooms, dark or hidden staircases, and possibly ruined sections. The castle may be near or connected to caves, which lend their own haunting flavor with their branchings, claustrophobia, and mystery. (Translated into modern filmmaking, the setting might be in an old house or mansion-or even a new house-where unusual camera angles, sustained close ups during movement, and darkness or shadows create the same sense of claustrophobia and entrapment.) In The Masque of the Red Death, Poe set this story in a castellated abbey cleverly designed by Prince Prospero. Lets take a careful look on how Poe described the abbey.“This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron.” From Poes description, we can notice the location of the abbey is isolated from the city of Prince Prospero (the prince whose territory has been devastated by the “red death”). And Prince Prospero, in order to prevent his fellows from escaping from the abbey and also prevent the invasion of “red death”, he asked his fellows to weld the bolts using furnaces and hammers. All of the descriptions of the place the story happens are just like other traditional Gothic fictions that are in an isolated, weird building. Furthermore, the settings in the abbey are also related to Gothicism.3.2 An atmosphere of mystery and suspenseGothic fiction is usually pervaded by a threatening feeling, a fear enhanced by the unknown. Often the plot itself is built around a mystery, such as unknown parentage, a disappearance of the characters or some other supernatural or unexplainable things which are often ghosts or giants walking or inanimate objects become live at night. At the beginning of The Masque of the Red Death, Allan Poe presents the story in an unknown country, i