MYSTERY - UNRAVELING GOREY,EDWARD TANGLED WEB OF VISUAL METAPHOR

This article examines the manipulation of visual metaphor in the carto ons of Edward Gorey. Like verbal metaphor, visual metaphor may be anal yzed using I. A. Richards's categories of tenor, vehicle, and ground. Gorey's fictional world is dark, macabre, and strange, yet his style i s at once brooding, dangerous, and familiar, old-fashioned in appearan ce yet modem in theme. He uses Victorian motifs and Gothic settings to examine modern beliefs and fears, capitalizing on the formula of the menace inherent in the familiar. Gorey uses symbols, signs, and icons from the common visual lexicon but changes their contexts to simultane ously emphasize and undermine their sentimentality.