Grotesque: Between the canonical and the marginal

Abstract

This essay discusses aspects concerning the relationship established between the grotesque and the marginal with the canon in literary productions. By using some examples of grotesque authors, marginalized and canonical, in the sphere of production of Portuguese language poetry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from the perspective of poet-critics and poet-critics, we see that it is not only aesthetic criteria that define what is canonical. Thus, despite being valuable, much of the grotesque production is marginalized. Strangeness, a category that is both evaluative and depreciative, makes the grotesque belong, then, to the canon and to the marginal.