Open Access"The fall of the house of Usher" : a master text for (Poe's) American Gothic
Author(s) -
María Benita Nadal Blasco
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of english studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.115
H-Index - 4
eISSN - 1695-4300
pISSN - 1576-6357
DOI - 10.18172/jes.141
Subject(s) - narrative , miller , fall of man , literature , art , selection (genetic algorithm) , art history , history , law , computer science , politics , ecology , artificial intelligence , political science , biology
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”.