Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 1904, Vol. 19
The second collection of Poe's tales bears, as is well known, the striking and strange title Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. It has always been a question of some interest how Poe managed to hit upon this peculiarly happy name for his collection of twenty tales. No satisfactory explanation has as yet been given. In his Preface1 to the tales Poe remarks upon their name, but does not offer any suggestion as to where he took it from. He says there: The epithets Grotesque and 'arabesque' will be found to indicate with sufficient precision the prevalent tenor of the tales here published, but affords no further explanation. Professor Belden, of the University of Missouri, suggests this explanation 2 It is held by some that his 'tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque' got their peculiar title, if nothing else, from the arabesken of the German romanti cists but [the title] is merely a matter of name that might be learned from a book-cover.
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