Tales of The Grotesque and Arabesque - "Grotesque" and "Arabesque"

"Grotesque" and "Arabesque"

When its publication was announced in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, its one-line description said that its title "pretty well indicates their character." There has been some debate, however, over the meaning of Poe's terms "Grotesque" and "Arabesque." Poe probably had seen the terms used by Sir Walter Scott in his essay "On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition" Both terms refer to a type of Islamic art used to decorate walls, especially in mosques. These arts styles are known for their complex nature. Poe had used the term "arabesque" correctly in his essay "The Philosophy of Furniture."

Poe may have been using these terms as subdivisions of Gothic art or Gothic architecture in an attempt to establish similar subdivisions in Gothic fiction. For example, the "grotesque" stories are those where the character becomes a caricature or satire, as in "The Man That Was Used Up". The "arabesque" stories focus on a single aspect of a character, often psychological, such as "The Fall of the House of Usher." A distant relative of Poe, modern scholar Harry Lee Poe, wrote that "grotesque" means "horror", which is gory and often disgusting, and "arabesque" means "terror", which forsakes the blood and gore for the sake of frightening the reader. Even so, accurately defining Poe's intentions for the terms is difficult and subdividing his tales into one category or another is even more difficult.