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is surrounded by ''grottesche'' in this fresco detail from Villa D'Este ]] When commonly used in conversation, grotesque means strange, fantastic, ugly or bizarre, and thus is often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such as Halloween masks or Gargoyle s on churches. More specifically, the grotesque forms on Gothic Buildings , when not used as drainspouts, should not be called Gargoyle s, but rather referred to simply as grotesques, or Chimeras . ETYMOLOGY The word ''grotesque'' comes from the same Latin root as ''" Grotto "'', meaning a small cave or hollow. The expression comes from the unearthing and rediscovery of ancient Roman decorations in caves and buried sites in the 15th century. These "caves" were in fact rooms and corridors of the Domus Aurea , the unfinished palace complex started by Nero after the great fire from 64 AD. IN ART HISTORY In art, grotesques are a decorative form of took up the theme of grotesques in decorating the Villa Madama , the most influential of the new Roman villas. Through Engraving s the grotesque mode of surface ornament passed into the European artistic repertory of the sixteenth century, from Spain to Poland. Soon ''grottesche'' appeared in Marquetry (fine woodwork), in Maiolica produced above all at Urbino from the late 1520s, then in book illustration and in other decorative uses. At Fontainebleau Rosso Fiorentino and his team enriched the vocabulary of grotesques by combining them with the decorative form of Strapwork , the portrayal of leather straps in plaster or wood moldings, which forms an element in grotesques. By extension backwards in time, in modern terminology for medieval Illuminated Manuscript s, Drolleries , half-human thumbnail vignettes drawn in the margins, are also called "grotesques". In contemporary illustration art, the "grotesque" figures, in the ordinary conversational sense, commonly appear in the genre ''grotesque art'', also known as Fantastic Art . , 1780s]] IN TYPOGRAPHY Grotesque (generally with an upper-case ''G'') is the style of the Sans Serif types of the 19th Century . Capital -only faces of this style were available from 1816. The name "Grotesque" was coined by William Thorowgood, the first to produce a sans-serif type with Lower Case , in 1832. Examples of Grotesque designs are:
The later designs are sometimes classified as ''neo-grotesque'' (see: Typeface ). IN LITERATURE In fiction, characters are usually considered grotesque if they induce both empathy and disgust. (A character who inspires disgust alone is simply a villain or a Monster .) Obvious examples would include the physically deformed and the mentally deficient, but people with cringe-worthy social traits are also included. The reader becomes piqued by the grotesque's positive side, and continues reading to see if the character can conquer their darker side. In Shakespeare's '' The Tempest '', the figure of Caliban has inspired more nuanced reactions than simple scorn and disgust. '' (1890)]] Victor Hugo 's '' Hunchback Of Notre Dame '' is one of the most celebrated grotesques in literature. Dr. Frankenstein's monster can also be considered a grotesque, as well as The Phantom Of The Opera . Other instances of the romantic grotesque are also to be found in Edgar Allan Poe , E.T.A. Hoffmann , in '' Sturm Und Drang '' literature or in Sterne's '' Tristram Shandy ''. Romantic grotesque is far more terrible and somber than medieval grotesque, which celebrated laughter and fertility. The grotesque received a new shape with Alice In The Wonderland by Lewis Carroll , when a girl meets fantastic grotesque figures in her fantasy world. Carroll manages to make the figures seem less frightful and fit for Children's Literature , but still utterly strange. Southern Gothic is the genre most frequently identified with grotesques and William Faulkner is often cited as the ringmaster. Flannery O'Connor wrote, "Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one" ("Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction," 1960). In her often-anthologized Short-story " A Good Man Is Hard To Find ," the Misfit, a serial killer, is clearly a maimed soul, utterly callous to human life but driven to seek the truth. The less obvious grotesque is the polite, doting grandmother who is unaware of her own astonishing selfishness. Another oft-cited example of the Grotesque from O'Connor's work is her short-story entitled "A Temple Of The Holy Ghost." The term Theatre Of The Grotesque refers to an anti- Naturalistic school of Italian dramatists, writing in the 1910s and 1920s , who are often seen as precursors of the Theatre Of The Absurd . IN ARCHITECTURE ]] While often confused with Gargoyle s, these stone carvings are not born from the general form of a water spout. This type of sculpture is also called a Chimera . IN CHESS Chess Problem s with positions which would be regarded by conventional criteria as "ugly", especially those in which a small number of white pieces fight against a much larger number of black ones, are called ''grotesques''. See Grotesque (chess) for more. SEE ALSO
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