A Perfect Story Never Dies

A Perfect Story Never Dies

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” is a perfect story. And a perfect story never dies. Even if that story, rather paradoxically, purports and depicts the inevitability of our mortalities. This edition of the piece is an attempt at providing fresh analytical commentary to reveal the story’s strengths and what its allusions and allegories are doing for it, characterizes the story as a work of Vanitas art painted through haunting and vivid, image-ridden prose, along with a concluding argument which makes the case for verbal art, or prose, being more valuable than physical art, or specifically illustrations.

-Edited by Link Linquist

For other takes on “The Masque of the Red Death” check out Abby Embree’s “The Colors of the Red Death” which features commentary focused on how the story relates to life, fear, and color; Kade Cockrum’s “Ghost and Poe: How a Plague is Shown Across Creative Medias” which connects the story to music; Daniel Peter’s edition on the story, which argues that “The Masque of the Red Death” is a product of Poe compromising between creating a work which appeals both to his contemporary readers and to his own taste in art; and Leah Wegmen’s “Death and the Anti-Christ” which connects the figure of the Red Death to the Anti-Christ and the Christian apocalypse.

For my personal favorite within this collection, due to how creative and fresh her commentary is, check out Grace Martin’s “General ‘Political Catfish’ Smith,” which connects Poe’s story “The Man That Was Used Up” to the concept of contemporary cat-fishing.

The source text I am using is:

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Masque of the Red Death.” The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe – Vol. 1: Tales (1850): 1:339-345, edited by Rufus Wilmot Griswold, J. S. Redfield, 1850. The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, eapoe.org/index.htm.