Prospero’s Clock-Architecture in “The Masque of the Red Death” Revisited

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In chapter 3 of Brett Zimmerman’s book Edgar Allan Poe: Rhetoric and Style —titled “ Allegoria , Chronographia , and Clock Architecture in ‘The Masque of the Red Death’”—he offers a diagram of Prospero’s imperial suite as shaped like a half-clock, each of the seven rooms an allegorical representation of the hours between 6 p.m. and midnight. Within those rooms walk Prospero, representing the quickly moving minute hand as it makes its way from the 11:30 p.m. position through the thirty minutes to midnight, and the Phantom of the Red Death, representing the slowly moving hour hand. David Ketterer, however, has challenged that schema as inaccurate, arguing, as well, that the architectural plan of Prospero’s suite has no discernible pattern. In this refutation of Ketterer’s refutation, Zimmerman makes some minor concessions but bolsters his original argument that the numbers the mathematics-minded Poe provides in the tale are essential clues not to be dismissed. Additionally, he provides an alternative schema addressing Ketterer’s complaint that the original diagram does not sufficiently show the “sharp turn” experienced by Prospero’s masqueraders as they go from one symbolically significant room to the next.