Editing Grotesque (section)

==In literature==
One of the first uses of the term grotesque to denote a literary genre is in [[Essays (Montaigne)|Montaigne's ''Essays'']].<ref>Kayser (1957) I.2 ''Ce discours est bien grotesue''</ref> The Grotesque is often linked with [[satire]] and [[tragicomedy]].<ref name="Clark91p20">Clark (1991) [https://books.google.com/books?id=LOeLRDzui_wC&pg=PR20 pp. 20–1]</ref> 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".<ref name="Clark91p20"/>

Some of 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 [[Cyclopes|Cyclops]] 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 ''[[Ars Poetica (Horace)|Art of Poetry]]'' also provides a formal introduction to 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 [[Edmund Spenser|Spenser]]'s allegory in ''[[The Faerie Queene]]'' to the tragi-comic modes of 16th-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.<ref>{{cite book|last=Harham|first=Geoffrey Galt|title=On the Grotesque|year=1982|publisher=Princeton University Press|location=US}}</ref> [[Gothic Literature|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.<ref>{{cite book|last=Castle|first=Terry|title=Masquerade and Civilization|year=1986|publisher=Methuen}}</ref>

Another major source of the grotesque is in satirical writings of the 18th century. [[Jonathan Swift]]'s ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'' provides a variety of approaches to grotesque representation. Corporeal hybridity is an essential marker in Swift. 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 (character)|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 the grotesque template.

[[Victor Hugo]]'s ''[[The Hunchback of Notre-Dame]]'' is one of the most celebrated grotesques in literature. [[Frankenstein's monster|Dr. Frankenstein's monster]] from [[Mary Shelley]]'s 1818 novel ''[[Frankenstein|Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus]]'' can also be considered a grotesque, as well as the title character, [[Erik (The Phantom of the Opera)|Erik]], in ''[[The Phantom of the Opera (novel)|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 ''[[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman|Tristram Shandy]]''. The romantic grotesque is far more terrible and sombre than the medieval grotesque, which celebrated laughter and fertility. It is at this point that a grotesque creature such as Frankenstein's monster begins to be presented more sympathetically as the outsider who is the victim of society.<ref>See Jeanne M. Britton, 'Novelistic Sympathy in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" ' ''Studies in Romanticism'' Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring, 2009)3–22, p. 3.</ref> But the novel also makes the issue of sympathy problematic in an unkind society. This means that society becomes the generator of the grotesque, by a process of alienation.<ref>Hanis McLaren Caldwell, ''Literature and Medicine in Nineteenth-Century Britain: from Mary Shelley to George Eliot'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 42.</ref> In fact, the grotesque monster in ''Frankenstein'' tends to be described as "the creature".

The grotesque received a new shape with ''[[Alice's Adventures in 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. Another comic grotesque writer who played on the relationship between sense and nonsense was [[Edward Lear]]. Humorous or festive nonsense of this kind has its roots in the seventeenth-century traditions of fustian, bombastic and satirical writing.<ref>See Noel Malcolm, ''The Origins of English Nonsense'' (Fontana, 1997). {{ISBN|0006388442}}</ref>

During the nineteenth-century category of grotesque body was increasingly displaced by the notion of congenital deformity or medical anomaly.<ref>See George M. Gould and Walter M. Pyle's ''Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine'' (1896).</ref> Building on this context, the grotesque begins to be understood more as deformity and disability, especially after the [[World War I|First World War]], 1914–18. In these terms, the art historian [[Leah Dickerman]] has argued that "The sight of horrendously shattered bodies of veterans returned to the home front became commonplace. The accompanying growth in the prosthetic industry struck contemporaries as creating a race of half-mechanical men and became an important theme in [[Dada|dadaist]] work.'<ref>Leah Dickerman, ''Dada'', National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2005, pp. 3–4.</ref> The poetry of [[Wilfred Owen]] displays a poetic and realistic sense of the grotesque horror of war and the human cost of brutal conflict. Poems such as ''Spring Offensive'' and ''Greater Love'' combined images of beauty with shocking brutality and violence in order to produce a sense of the grotesque clash of opposites. In a similar fashion, [[Ernst Friedrich]] (1894–1967), founder of the Berlin Peace Museum, an anarchist and a pacifist, was the author of ''War Against War'' (1924) which used grotesque photographs of mutilated victims of the First World War in order to campaign for peace.

[[Southern Gothic]] is a genre frequently identified with grotesques and [[William Faulkner]] is often cited as the leading exponent. [[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 (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 (novelist)|Raymond Kennedy]] is another author associated with the literary tradition of the grotesque.