"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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Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
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Universidad de La Rioja
2009-05-01
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Series: | Journal of English Studies |
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Online Access: | https://publicaciones.unirioja.es/ojs/index.php/jes/article/view/141 |
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”. |
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ISSN: | 1576-6357 1695-4300 |