ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a comprehensive discussion of the art of Crashaw's devotional grotesque images — notably, those related to the Passion of Christ and the contrition of Magdalene — by contextualizing it within Catholic visual piety and Baroque poetics. It focuses on the power of Crashaw's grotesque images to fill the mind with divine terror or awe has much to do with what Aristotle calls 'liveliness', the appeal to the sense of sight to actively stir the reader's emotion as if s/he were present in actual events. The Aristotelian energeia as an effectual emotional stimulus serves as an important foundation of Catholic visual piety and of Baroque poetics of the marvellous, both of which are essential to a solid understanding of Crashaw's energetically sensuous metaphors that breed grotesque images. The chapter expresses that Crashaw is the master of pseudometaphor: his devotional pseudometaphors, notably those of Christ's wounds, effectively produce grotesque images that motivate the mind to 'savour' divine terror.
