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Geoffrey Galt
Harpham, On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in
Art and Literature
Critical Studies in the Humanities
The concept of the grotesque appeared
in the Renaissance, when the word grottesche was first used
as a name for a new, or newly discovered, type of decorative art
that incorporated human, floral, and animal elements, compromising a
commonsensical distinction between the figural art of the center and
the ornamental art of the margin.
In this classic study, Geoffrey Galt
Harpham argues that the richest understanding of the grotesque
derives from precisely such a confusion between margin and center,
or between an art that represents the world as conventionally
perceived and the world as imagined in dreams, fantasies, or myths.
Through discussions of pictorial art from the Paleolithic art of the
cave, or "grotto" to more recent times, and of narratives by Bronte,
Poe, Mann, and Conrad, Harpham argues that the grotesque should be
seen not as an artistic anomaly or aberration but as a "species of
confusion" that structures the concept of art itself. A final
chapter on the aesthetic theories of Kant, Hegel, Ruskin, and others
tracks the ways in which the grotesque has haunted the thinking of
the leading theorists of the Western tradition.
By locating the grotesque not on the
margins of certain works of art but at the center of the concept of
art, Harpham suggests that the problems raised by the grotesque
provide a unique perspective on questions of general importance.
This reissue includes a new introduction by the author that recalls
the personal and intellectual context in which the book was written.
It is amusing, and highly instructive for those writing a first book.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the 1982 Edition
Acknowledgments
Part One
Chapter one. Formation, Deformation, and Reformation: An
Introduction to the Grotesque
Chapter two. Grotesque and Grottesche
Chapter three. Grotesque and Grotto-esque
Part Two
Chapter four. Walking on Silence: The Lamination of Narratives in
Wuthering Heights
Chapter five. Permeability and the Grotesque: “The Masque of the Red
Death”
Chapter six. Metaphor, Marginality, and Parody in Death in Venice
Chapter seven. To Make You Sea: Conrad’s Primal Words
Chapter eight. Conclusion: Doodles, Dragons, Dissonance, and
Discovery
Notes
Index
Author
Geoffrey Galt Harpham is President and Director of the
National Humanities Center, and Visiting Research Professor
of English at Duke University and at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition to On the Grotesque,
Professor Harpham has authored such notable titles as
Language Alone: The Critical Fetish of Modernity,
Shadows of Ethics: Criticism and the Just Society, and
One of Us: The Mastery of Joseph Conrad.
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