The Grotesque in Edogawa Ranpo’s selected Short Stories

While much work has been carried out on the topic of grotesque in connection with the Western literaturein terms of medievalism, Gothic literature or dark romanticism, little attention has been paid to the relation of thisterm to the Eastern literature, mainly to the Japanese literature. This paper focuses on Edogawa Ranpo, the wellknownJapanese writer, elaborates the term grotesque in Japanese literary tradition and analyses the presentation ofit in his selected short stories. Geographically and literally speaking, Japan, as a country in the Far East, is includedwithin the discussion of Orientalism which has made it attractive, especially to the western countries because of thefeatures such as exoticism, strangeness and unfamiliarity. Japanese culture and society have been considered both richand uncanny due to people’s adherence to the tradition, folklore and mythological elements. Edogawa Ranpo isregarded as the founder of modern Japanese detective and mystery novels. His creation of characters, plots and themesare profoundly and psychologically intriguing and bizarre. Ranpo’s short stories are explored in the present paper andthe use of grotesque is presented through deep dark probabilities of human’s decisions and actions.

کلیدواژه ها:

grotesque ، psychology ، Japanese short stories ، horror ، mistery