The Grotesque Body in Modernity: Poe and Rampo in Dialogue

Abstract

This study examines the grotesque body in the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe and Edogawa Rampo through three comparative pairings: "Hog Frog" and "The Dancing Dwarf," "The Man That Was Used Up" and "The Caterpillar," and "The Black Cat" and "The Idol." Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's conception of the material and social body and Wolfgang Kayser's emphasis on estrangement, it analyses how altered, mutilated, transformed, and artificial bodies expose tensions surrounding identity, violence, and the instability of modern life. Rampo's engagement with Poe reveals both transnational continuity of the grotesque and its variation across historical contexts.