"The fall of the house of Usher" : a master text for (Poe's) American Gothic

This paper analyses a selection of Poe’s fiction taking as a point of departure the contentions of critics such as Hillis Miller and Eric Savoy on the characteristics of American Gothic. The paper starts with a discussion of these features, which “The Fall of the House of Usher” epitomizes. After a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Marita Nadal
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universidad de La Rioja 2009-05-01
Series:Journal of English Studies
Subjects:
Online Access:https://publicaciones.unirioja.es/ojs/index.php/jes/article/view/141
Description
Summary:This paper analyses a selection of Poe’s fiction taking as a point of departure the contentions of critics such as Hillis Miller and Eric Savoy on the characteristics of American Gothic. The paper starts with a discussion of these features, which “The Fall of the House of Usher” epitomizes. After a revision of “Usher”, the paper explores other Poe works, showing that the elements that make this narrative a master text for the history of American Gothic are somehow anticipated in Poe’s previous tales, like “Berenice” and “Ligeia”, in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and peculiarly reflected in the late tale of detection “The Purloined Letter”.
ISSN:1576-6357
1695-4300