On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature

Consider: "In this comprehensive, original, and wide-ranging study, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that we should view the grotesque not as a marginal or aberrant form, but rather as a key to central concepts in the Western artistic tradition." This statement from the product page certainly provides a general summary of "On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature," but it is just an introduction.What Harpham does is much more. He traces the history of the grotesque from ancient cave drawings and their possible meanings through the Gothic and Renaissance periods, and then through its use, not only in art criticism, but in the heart of literature, particularly in Bronte, Poe, Mann, Conrad, and O'Connor. This book is a demanding, but rewarding read."Faith in 'God' is a faith in the hidden order of apparently disorderly things, the hidden meaning of the apparently meaningless....And this is the final paradox: really to understand the grotesque is to cease to regard it as grotesque" (76). Nabokov wrote of nannons, or misformed, knobby things. But let them look into a funhouse mirror, and the distortion un-distorts the nannons to become beautiful things. Is this why the gargoyle was the form for gutter spouts atop medieval cahedrals--to call our attention to our sinful nature in order that we un-distort ourselves into sinless creatures?Well, of course becoming sinless is impossible. Thus the grotesque gargoyle, a marginal character in the iconography of cathedral art, is a constant reminder of the paradox of our nature. Think of the sublimity of sex, then visualize how beastly it is in performance. Paradox.Harpham's thesis is that the grotesque, which originated as a marginal creation, becomes the core in interpreting and understanding what the artist and writer are about. One thing we know about gargoyle art is that they were not scripted. The unknown sculptors simply created these images. However, the mind must have meaning, so it created one: the gargoyles represent our sinful nature. As in Jewish midrash (the interpretation of the white spaces on which black letters are placed), or the marginal and the core, or the mysterious and the obvious, the grotesque must be interpreted, must be given meaning.The study of the grotesque takes us on a paradigm shift from obvious meaning of intentional art and prose to the confusing, shifting vagaries of meaning of the marginal, which itself becomes the new core of meaning. Picasso's art epitomizes this paradigm shift from realism to the confusing dissection of objects, then re-organizing, re-creating a new subject.Harpham says that the use of language, particularly English, also is a traveler in paradox and meaning. Joseph Conrad chose to write in English, his third language, because it allowed him to play with words and meanings, context and subcontext, much more than Polish or French. According to Harpham, Conrad's biggest objective was "to make man see," or understand truths, yet he intentionally employed obfuscation in making his meanings.Thus, language itself has its own grotesqueries and paradoxes. When Kurtz speaks of "the horror, the horror," what does he mean? Is this one horror simply repeated (an old core), or two or more horrors implied (a new paradigm)? (Harpham's application of the grotesque to  Heart of Darkness  is worth the price of the book.)Harpham's discussion of Flannery O'Connor's fiction is why I read this book. She is last in the series of authors under study in their use of the grotesque. For O'Connor "her art is an art of the margin marked by constant interpenetration" (185) of one story into another. Her inclusion of the grotesque in her fictions is the art of moral extremes, for within her grotesque characters she buries "the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace" (186). In  Wise Blood: A Novel  she plants the story of Christ driving demons out of a man and into swine into the make of car called Essex, a name also of a breed of swine. Also Hoover Shoats, another pig reference, is another form of the same story, including our own, that is, referential elements of our sinful nature with possibility of grace attained.This statement by Harpham essentially summarizes his thesis:"Meaning is made through connections, by linking something with something else outside itself; it is made by establishing relations both within and outside the text, by ascribing intentionality to things that do not inherently possess it, by seeing elements in contexts other than the ones in which they occur, by seeing one thing as another" (187)."On the Grotesque" is packed with history, theology, philosophy, literary criticism. A review can hardly do justice to its content and context. For the serious student of language, this is an essential study.

It provides a good overall vision about the grotesque, pointing the general rules about this aesthetics. I would recomend this over Kayser's work for beginner researchers.

Words have multiple meanings and like life, they also evolve over time. Most people these days think of the word "Grotesque" as an adjective for something ugly, disgusting, deformed, abhorrent. Many people even use the word to describe carnage, as a synonym for GORY! This is correct, sorta...but it COMPLETELY misses the point of the word as it was originally coined. During the Italian renaissance, all sorts of cultural changes were happening! People were finally shaking off the suffocating restrictions of the dark ages and RELIGION, which still restricts us today. But the renaissance was an awaking in Europe because of what it meant to Art. In Rome, a now ancient palace from the days of mighty Roman Empire known as the Domus Area is excavated. Below ground this discovery is made, like a cave. On the walls of the "cave" are beautiful frescoes that whimsically mix human, animal, plant, and architectural forms. Women turning into vines, birds becoming flowers, freaky, fun ART for ARTS sake!After SO MANY centuries of religious oppression, European visual Artists had enough of Jesus and the Madonna paintings, sculptures, etc, etc. They were ready for something NEW, something a bit daring. This newly discovered Art from ancient Rome tickled their fancy. The "Grotto"(cave)is what they called this underground excavation. The word Grotto is added to ~esque, meaning "in the spirit of". Valla! The concept of GROTESQUE is born! So we begin to see whimsical, non-sensible, slightly chaotic yet curiously beautiful forms appear in the margins of paintings of Jesus. Perhaps as a beautifully ornate sculpted frame. In the corners of buildings, on the fringes of the focus, so to speak. This Art form, TRULY the first time Art for Art's sake came about in our post christian era, it ignited something deeper in our culture. I would go so far as to say it helped secularize us! But the author of this wonderful book, which I read over 20 years ago now in college, deals mostly with literature and woodcut visual Art of the renaissance before laying out the true depths of the Grotesque in our western world.I'm about to buy this book, because I've never owned a copy, but in college it REALLY shaped me as a visual Artist! I need to read it again. It was originally recommended to me by an AMAZING comparative literature professor who I thought was super cool in college. He was the only teacher I had who I really wanted to hang out with for a minute. He asked me why I wanted to sculpt monsters for movies for a living (I was a sculpture major working in and towards make-up/creature fx in Hollywood) and I said I "always found the grotesque sort of beautiful". It's weird to think this, at least it was then, so I thought I was being ironic with that statement. But then he drops the name of this book on me. And when I went to check it out at the CSULB library, and read it....WOW! I GOT it. I mean, I GOT IT! IT's SO DEEP, this word has SO lost it's real power, it's cache over the years! We don't know how much our language changes and evolves. It happens so slowly we don't notice. This book reminds you of that, while it gives a broad perspective on myth, religion (the same thing), Art, culture, SEX, vagina caves of mother earth symbolically giving birth to all living matter on earth. Cool stuff!! EVOLUTION!It influenced my Artwork profoundly, and continues to.Grotesque is just one of those words that deserves more respect and understanding. If you are a visual Artist or ANY kind of creative person I would HIGHLY recommend you read this book. It will alter your understanding of reality! I remember my professor and I laughing about that, how some books can just totally rearrange your paradigm, give your a broader, more enlightened perspective of our reality, our culture. This book does that.Listen to death metal while you read it! Lol!

This is one of those of those rare things, a work of literary criticism that is a literary masterpiece in its own right. I can only compare it with Gaston Bachelard's luminous The Poetics of Space. Not only is the prose a delight to relish and enjoy but the perspicacity of its insights transforms one's vision to see depths of meaning in things that until seen through this lens would have left only a vague sense of there surely being more here but i lack the discernment to see through to it. This book will sensitize one to new levels of significance in art, architecture and literature.

THE EXPERIENCE WAS GOOD.