SOURCE: "Anything Goes: Comic Aspects in 'The Cask of Amontillado'," in American Humor: Essays Presented to John C. Gerber, edited by O. M. Brack, Jr., Arete Publications, 1977, pp. 13-26.

In the following essay, Clendenning details the story's parody of Catholic rites and enological errors, identifying Montresor and Fortunato as classic comic figures.

The reader who seeks guidance by perusing the "Preface" to Poe's Tales of The Grotesque and Arabesque (1840) may feel justifiably exasperated. Instead of finding definitions which might help to explain the book's title and thus lead to formal distinctions between the two aspects of Poe's fiction, the reader is confronted with the evasive assertion that the key terms, grotesque and arabesque, are self-evident, that the stories themselves demonstrate the difference. "The epithets 'Grotesque' and 'Arabesque'," he says at the outset, "will be found to indicate with sufficient precision the prevalent tenor of the tales here published...