The Grotesque in Darkness Visible and Rites of Passage
1982; Duke University Press; Volume: 28; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/441153
ISSN2325-8101
Autores Tópico(s)Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices
ResumoAlthough William Golding's use of grotesque in his earlier fiction, starting with Lord of Flies, has been well established, full implications have not been adequately accounted for. John Stinson, commenting on this matter, concludes his essay, . .between two worlds, ... Golding's art ... will have to make its choice of direction: down into Nothingness and Pure Absurdity, or off into Grace and Redemption.1 There is also a third possibility, i.e., that Golding's art has turned directly to grotesque because of his vision of world as an inseparable amalgam of elements including comic, tragic, pathetic, and absurd-with occasional lurches into grace. If novel is an ordering of reality, then given Golding's views, grotesque novel is correct form to reflect what Wolfgang Kayser has called the terror inspired by unfathomable.2 Kayser's book The Grotesque in Art and Literature contains a persuasive description of grotesque in which he holds that grotesque in art is a result of seeing events in a particular way. The grotesque also implies a structural principle that governs form of esthetic object; while Kayser does not dwell on exact nature of this form, it is clear that he sees it as more than occasional flights which mix comic and tragic and merely create a momentary effect of grotesque. Kayser first cites generally acknowledged terms of grotesque-maimed, deformed, monstrous, unnatural, fantasticalwhich may excite both pity and laughter or disgust in context-then attempts to define attributes of grotesque. He finds that grotesque is a reflection of alienated world: that is to say, our world is turned into one that is strange and ominous, one that denies our
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