Inverted Masonic Ritual in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”

Abstract

This article reads “The Cask of Amontillado” as an inverted Masonic initiation ritual. Drawing on Edgar Allan Poe’s biographical context and his possible links to Freemasonry, it examines the catacombs as a degraded temple, carnival and masks as anti-ritual space, and the names Fortunato and Montresor as ironic keys. Engaging with recent scholarship on Freemasonry and Gothic literature, the study argues that Poe reverses the initiatory pattern: the descent no longer leads from darkness to light, but from the deceptive brightness of festivity to a definitive, irredeemable darkness, thereby transforming fraternal symbolism into a theater of calculated vengeance.