From Kleist to Poe: Structural and Thematic Affinities in “The Beggar Woman of Locarno” and “The Masque of the Red Death”

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to elaborate a comparative study between Heinrich von Kleist’s short story “The Beggar Woman of Locarno” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”. In order to do so, we must take into account that both authors are considered fundamental for the consolidation process that underwent the short story during the first half of the 19th century within their respective national literatures. Taking also in consideration the deep knowledge of the horror fiction of their time that both had, this leads to a series of formal and thematic similarities in their texts that locates both of them in a literary constellation full of common sources and admirers. Nevertheless, a closer reading of the proposed works reveal an unexpected affinity in the way that Kleist and Poe manipulated generic conventions: by subverting generic expectations, the two of them propose a conception of horror in which our inability to solve the supernatural mystery questions the existence of a harmonic moral order and even human capability to understand the world we live in.