“The Masque of the Red Death” in Literature and Cinema: Poe’s Short Story and Corman’s Film Adaptation

Abstract

Scholars have addressed the rhetorical-pragmatic aspects of “The Masque of the Red Death” from a cognitive perspective, and observed that Poe displays a perfect example of our mind, our analogical thinking. Randal Johnson (1982, 11–12) affirms that the clearest difference between romance and film is that which is found between verbal and visual communication: the image is an analogical, continuous, iconic representation of reality while verbal language is a non-analogue, discontinuous, and basically symbolic representation of reality. In this chapter, my first objective is to ascertain whether or not Corman’s film adaptation of “The Masque of the Red Death” retains the essential characteristics of Poe’s original story. Changes in the enunciation and the enunciators—Poe and Corman—are intertextually present. Basic categories such as space, time, and agency will be used to point out possible alternatives to the interpretation of Poe’s story.