Grotesque(Wiki)

The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", which originated from Greek krypte "hidden place", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century.

 

The "caves" were in fact rooms and corridors of the Domus Aurea, the unfinished palace complex started by Nero after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64, which had become overgrown and buried, until they were broken into again, mostly from above.

Spreading from Italian to the other European languages, the term was long used largely interchangeably with arabesque and moresque for types of decorative patterns using curving foliage elements.

 

Since at least the 18th century (in French and German as well as English) grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, fantastic, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus is often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such as Halloween masks.

In art, performance, and literature, grotesque, however, may also refer to something that simultaneously invokes in an audience a feeling of uncomfortable bizarreness as well as empathic pity. More specifically, the grotesque forms on Gothic buildings, when not used as drain-spouts, should not be called gargoyles, but rather referred to simply as grotesques, or chimeras.

 

Etymology in Renaissance

 

   

Ceiling of the Piccolomini Library

 

 

                       

Maiolica pilgrim bottle with grottesche decor, Fontana workshop, Urbino, c 1560-70

 

Grotesque engraving on paper, c.1500 - 1512, Italy.

 

French neoclassical painted decor in the Raphaelesque grotesque manner at Fontainebleau, 1780s

In literature

One of the first uses of the term grotesque to denote a literary genre, was by Montaigne's Essays.

The Grotesque is often linked with satire and tragicomedy.

It is an effective artistic means to convey grief and pain to the audience, and for this has been labeled by Thomas Mann as the "genuine antibourgeois style".

 

The earliest written texts describe grotesque happenings and monstrous creatures.

The literature of Myth has been a rich source of monsters; from the one-eyed Cyclops (to cite one example) from Hesiod's Theogony to Homer's Polyphemus in the Odyssey. Ovid's Metamorphoses is another rich source for grotesque transformations and hybrid creatures of myth. Horace's Art of Poetry also provides a formal introduction classical values and to the dangers of grotesque or mixed form. Indeed the departure from classical models of order, reason, harmony, balance and form opens up the risk of entry into grotesque worlds. Accordingly British literature abounds with native grotesquerie, from the strange worlds of Spenser's allegory in The Faerie Queene, to the tragi-comic modes of sixteenth-century drama. (Grotesque comic elements can be found in major works such as King Lear.)

Literary works of mixed genre are occasionally termed grotesque, as are "low" or non-literary genres such as pantomime and farce.

 

Gothic writings often have grotesque components in terms of character, style and location. In other cases, the environment described may be grotesque - whether urban (Charles Dickens), or the literature of the American south which has sometimes been termed "Southern Gothic." Sometimes the grotesque in literature has been explored in terms of social and cultural formations such as the carnival(-esque) in François Rabelais and Mikhail Bakhtin. Terry Castle has written on the relationship between metamorphosis, literary writings and masquerade.

 

Another major source of the grotesque is in satirical writings of the eighteenth century.

Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels provides a variety of approaches to grotesque representation. In poetry, the works of Alexander Pope provide many examples of the grotesque.

 

In fiction, characters are usually considered grotesque if they induce both empathy and disgust. (A character who inspires disgust alone is simply a villain or a monster.) Obvious examples would include the physically deformed and the mentally deficient, but people with cringe-worthy social traits are also included. The reader becomes piqued by the grotesque's positive side, and continues reading to see if the character can conquer their darker side. In Shakespeare's The Tempest, the figure of Caliban has inspired more nuanced reactions than simple scorn and disgust. Also, in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, the character of Gollum may be considered to have both disgusting and empathetic qualities, which fit him into the grotesque template.

 

Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of the most celebrated grotesques in literature.

Dr. Frankenstein's monster can also be considered a grotesque,

as well as the Phantom of the Opera and the Beast in Beauty and the Beast.

Other instances of the romantic grotesque are also to be found in Edgar Allan Poe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, in Sturm und Drang literature or in Sterne's Tristram Shandy.

 

Romantic grotesque is far more terrible and sombre than medieval grotesque, which celebrated laughter and fertility.

The grotesque received a new shape with Alice in the Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, when a girl meets fantastic grotesque figures in her fantasy world. Carroll manages to make the figures seem less frightful and fit for children's literature, but still utterly strange.

 

Alice surrounded by the characters of Wonderland in The Nursery "Alice" (1890)

 

Southern Gothic is a genre frequently identified with grotesques and William Faulkner is often cited as the ringmaster. Flannery O'Connor wrote, "Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one" ("Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction," 1960). In O'Connor's often-anthologized short-story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," the Misfit, a serial killer, is clearly a maimed soul, utterly callous to human life but driven to seek the truth. The less obvious grotesque is the polite, doting grandmother who is unaware of her own astonishing selfishness. Another oft-cited example of the grotesque from O'Connor's work is her short-story entitled "A Temple Of The Holy Ghost." The American novelist, Raymond Kennedy is another author associated with the literary tradition of the grotesque.

Contemporary writers of grotesque fiction include Paul Tremblay, Matt Bell, Chuck Palahniuk, Brian Evenson, Caleb J. Ross (who writes domestic grotesque fiction, and many authors who write in the bizarro genre of fiction.

 

In architecture

Grotesque at the University of Chicago

 

In architecture the term "grotesque" means a carved stone figure.

 

Grotesques are often confused with gargoyles, but the distinction is that gargoyles are figures that contain a water spout through the mouth, while grotesques do not. This type of sculpture is also called a chimera.

Used correctly, the term gargoyle refers to mostly eerie figures carved specifically as terminations to spouts which convey water away from the sides of buildings. In the Middle Ages, the term babewyn was used to refer to both gargoyles and grotesques. This word is derived from the Italian word babbuino, which means "baboon".