oe was influenced by the romantic ironists of the 18th century, like Friedrich Schlegel. Their technique of linking the monstrous and comical with order and patterns produced a subtle sinister effect, suggesting a 'trace of doubt'. The effect is a breaking down of our assumed way of looking at things, at our ordinary consciousness. In Masque of the Red Death, Poe creates this tension in several ways. The 17th century masque was an interactive form of drama. Poe uses his story interactively to mock the reader into recognition and reflection. By confusing grostesque and arabesque imagery, Poe further prods the reader towards reconciling the tension. As literary devices 'grotesque' suggests the chaotic, fearful and 'arabesque' a sense of detachment or perspective in the midst of confusion. Poe mingles the two terms together: in referring to the costumes he says:

"Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm...There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which have excited disgust"

Another arabesque pattern of concentric circles is mirrored in Propero walling himself in with Death--no way out. Poe was trying to evoke the reader into a heightened appreciation of mystery. He says: "Harmony can be the result of the imagination transmuting the elements of either beauty or deformity. When Fantasy seeks not merely disproportionate but incongruous or antagonistical elements, the effect is rendered more pleasurable from its greater positiveness. Into this kind of fantasy ...truth makes a merry effort to enter and we recognize true humor".

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