Macabre

In works of art, macabre (US /məˈkɑːb/ mə-KAHB or UK /məˈkɑːbrə/; French: [makabʁ]) is the quality of having a grim or atmosphere. Macabre works emphasize the details and symbols of death. The term also refers to works particularly gruesome in nature.

This quality is not often found in ancient Greek and Latin writers, though there are traces of it in Apuleius and the author of the Satyricon. Outstanding instances in English literature include the works of John Webster, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mervyn Peake, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and Cyril Tourneur. In American literature notable authors include Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King. The word has gained its significance from its use in French as la danse macabre for the allegorical representation of the ever-present and universal power of death, known in English as the Dance of Death and in German as Totentanz. The typical form which the allegory takes is that of a series of images in which Death appears, either as a dancing skeleton or as a shrunken shrouded corpse, to people representing every age and condition of life, and leads them all in a dance to the grave. Of the numerous examples painted or sculptured on the walls of cloisters or church yards through medieval Europe, few remain except in woodcuts and engravings.